Chapter 11: British Idolatry and the Religion of the Druids

British idolatry — The most ancient inhabitants of the island are unknown; and from where Britain was so called — The origins of peoples and nations are obscure — The causes of that obscurity — How great is the ignorance in tracing them — The ignorance and bad faith of the Greeks and Latins — The ancients buried Jewish antiquities under falsehoods — Hence their testimony is untrustworthy to others — Peculiar causes of ignorance regarding British origins — The island's situation — The ambition and cunning of the wise in concealing past matters — The islands of Europe occupied by the posterity of Japheth (Genesis 10:5) — From the first habitation to Caesar's arrival on this island, all things wrapped in darkness — Caesar's testimony — The interior of the island unknown to the Gauls — He holds the interior inhabitants to be aborigines (autochthones) — Tacitus: a mixture of many peoples; both writers speak absurdly — The attempt of Camden and Boxhorn to prove that the Britons and Gauls used the same language and were the same people — Gomer, the firstborn son of Japheth — From him the Cimbri are descended — The Britons call themselves Komeros or Cymeros — The Gomerians, or Cimbri — What the word signifies — The Britons as Cimbri — Another etymology of the name Cymro — Camber, son of Brutus — Hence Cambria — From where Britain is named — Various proposed etymologies rejected — Prytaneia — Brytona, a Cretan nymph — Britannia in Gaul — Bridanium — Prid Cain — Most think it was so named from Brutus the Trojan — That opinion contested by Camden — Camden's conjecture — Brith, Tania — Learned men support it — Arguments against it — Bochart's most probable conjecture — This island known to the Tyrians — Called "barat anac," or the field of tin — Defense of the conjecture against Hornius — British idolatry — The chief priests of British sacred rites, well known — Origen writes that the Druids worshipped one God — That God was the Sun — Tacitus: they shared the same rites as the Gauls — The custom of pouring out prayers with hands spread toward heaven — Andraste, and Andate, Astarte, the Moon — Boadicea, a vow made to her — Among the Gauls according to Caesar; received from the Massilian Greeks — Unknown to the Britons — The most ancient Gauls had no images — Their gods: Teutates, Hesus, and Taranis — Teutates from Diw Taith, leader of the way — The Sun, its worship — Hesus, and Haud — Taranis; hence Taran meaning thunder among the Welsh, Thunder, Donder, Thursday — The images of these gods — The Druids as chief priests — The spread of their superstition into Gaul and Germany — Its origin in Britain — From where the Druids are so called — Druys, king of the Celts — Bardus succeeded him — Drw the magician — Dru and Trou: truthful divine — The true etymology from the word drus — Drw in British meaning oak — The seat of superstition in oak groves — The same persons called Saronidae for the same reason — Who the Bards were — Their office — Their memory among the Cambro-Britons, and their name — Strabo noted — The distinctive dress of the Druids: white vestments in sacred rites — Their academy and studies — The gathering of young men for their instruction — The reasons for this, their privileges and authority — The custom of teaching in schools; the duration of study; the advancement of students — The philosophy they taught — Magic — What kind of medicine they practised — Their distinctive theology — The chief dogma thereof: the immortality of souls; the end of the world — They also taught rhetoric, geography, astronomy, natural philosophy, ethics — The rank of Druids among themselves — Their authority in the commonwealth — Under the pretext of religion they mixed in all affairs — The excommunication of transgressors — Their sacred rites: sacrifices; two kinds of human victims — The custom of human sacrifice, from Diodorus, Caesar, Strabo, Dio, and others — The fruitless Roman attempt to abolish the superstition — Britain freed through the gospel — The beginnings of the Christian religion on this island — Joseph of Arimathaea — Claudia — Pudens; concerning King Lucius — The epistolary exchange between him and Eleutherius — Bede, the author of the history — An error in assigning the time — Henry of Erfurt — Ado — The letter

230 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF IDOLATRY. [Book 3.

The outcome of the letter of Eleutherius according to Geoffrey and Leland — Whether Lucius received an apostolate — Camden yields to prejudice — The falsity of the history is shown — A summary of the history of Britain under the Romans — Conquered by Claudius — Reduced to the form of a province; nearly destroyed by Paulinus Suetonius; pacified by Agricola — The royal name and authority removed throughout the entire province — In the time of the Emperor Commodus there was no king in Britain — Lucius was not one — The Baronian defense of the history is examined — No Lucius holding a kingdom, neither within nor outside the wall of Hadrian — Who this Lucius was — The letter of Eleutherius shown to be a forgery.

I. It is just as certain that idolatrous superstition was brought to these British islands after the flood along with the first inhabitants, as it is uncertain who those first inhabitants were, or from where the islands of Britain or the British territories received their name. For the intervals of time, the vicissitudes of human affairs, the barbarism of the most ancient ages, and in those ages immediately following the earliest the lack of writers, together with the boldness of empty fabulists, have so obscured the earliest origins of almost all peoples and nations that the most excellent minds generally labor in vain to unearth them. There are therefore very many things which learned men frankly confess they are entirely ignorant of; and certain things which they think they understand quite well, I fear they are actually more ignorant of — to greater cost to themselves and to truth — than those things they feel they know nothing of at all; since the acceptance of falsehoods in place of truths drives us further from the truth than mere ignorance of the truth does. In most matters, beyond what we learn from the Greeks and Romans, mere conjecture holds sway. But with what trustworthiness, honesty, and skill in antiquity the most noted writers among those peoples dealt in reporting the origins of peoples, we know well enough from those whose accounts we can verify from other sources with the greatest certainty. Everyone knows with what falsehoods they attempt, as if with one voice, to bury Jewish antiquities — namely with the most monstrous fables, composed from vain traditions, or invented from their own imagination, like spiders' webs. But I am not easily persuaded to give credence to them in uncertain matters where my mind wavers at the boundaries — men whom in all those things of which I have had certain knowledge I have found to have lied splendidly, indeed prodigiously. It is therefore no wonder that the origins of the British peoples lie in darkness, since nearly all nations' beginnings — with the sole exception of those which sacred Scripture has placed beyond the hazard of controversy — are pressed down by the same murky night. But it is peculiar to the Britons, along with a few others, that to the common calamity there has accrued a twofold disadvantage, each one well suited to increase the darkness of the most ancient times. For since they were islanders and cut off from intercourse with the rest of the world, they had no means either of communicating the memory of their own name to others, or of acquiring the traditions or knowledge of others for themselves. Moreover — if it is lawful to believe so great a wrong — after writing became known, those who were considered the most keen-sighted and wise among them, in order that they themselves might be held in perpetual admiration and that nothing could be known by anyone without their assistance (which Cicero in his defence of Murena shows the ancient legal scholars had in mind), were unwilling to commit anything to writing for the benefit of posterity. Since therefore most, if not all, of the things necessary for accurately investigating the origins of these nations have been utterly erased from memory, it will be enough for me to follow the traces of what remains, whether truly attested or most probable.

II. All agree, relying on the words of the Holy Spirit in (Genesis 10:5), that the inhabitants of these islands are descended from the posterity of Japheth: "From these" — that is, from the sons of Japheth — "the islands of the nations were separated in their lands, each according to its language, according to its families, in their nations." From these words to the age of Caesar — what an empty void of centuries — that line of the poet may aptly be applied:

"Wherever I look, there is nothing but sea and air: the one swelling with waves, the other threatening with clouds." Whatever traces of truth remain must be unearthed by conjecture. For although it is most certain that these islands — contrary to the opinion of the very learned Camden — were known to the ancient Greeks and Tyrians, yet no one has been found who committed anything about them to the memory of the ages. "Who the mortals were," says Tacitus, "who first inhabited Britain, whether native-born or immigrants, is, as among barbarians, little known" (Agricola, ch. 11). And Caesar himself testifies in Book 4 of the Gallic War, ch. 20, to the great obscurity in which all British affairs were wrapped for him — a man most wise and best equipped with the benefits of all the world's knowledge, who had spent several years in neighbouring Gaul. "He thought," he says, "it would be of great service to him if he had only visited the island, observed what kind of men inhabited it, and become acquainted with its districts, harbours, and approaches — all of which were for the most part unknown to the Gauls. For no one except merchants goes there without good reason, and they themselves know nothing beyond the sea-coast and those regions that lie opposite Gaul." In Book 5, ch. 12, he holds the interior inhabitants to be aborigines or autochthones. "The interior of Britain," he says, "is inhabited by those who are said by tradition to have been born on the island itself" — as if, that is, the earth had germinated men like mushrooms or herbs. Tacitus speaks more fully in his Life of Agricola, ch. 11: "As for who the mortals were that first inhabited Britain, whether native-born or immigrants, there is, as among barbarians, little certainty. The physical characteristics of the inhabitants are varied, and from this arguments are drawn. For the red hair and large limbs of those who inhabit Caledonia point to a Germanic origin; the swarthy faces of the Silures, their hair mostly curly, and their position opposite Spain, support the belief that ancient Iberians crossed over and occupied those lands; those nearest to the Gauls resemble them, whether because the original racial character persists, or because the configuration of the climate, where the lands extend in different directions, has given the bodies their appearance. On the whole, however, to one who considers the matter generally, it is credible that the Gauls occupied the neighbouring land." It is absurd for him to suggest that these islands were inhabited by a rabble from neighbouring peoples; it is nearer the truth that he supposes the inhabitants crossed from Gaul. For it is now long since most of the more learned have adopted Camden's view, which holds that the Gauls and Britons are descended from the same stock, and that the latter crossed over here from Gaul. He also contends that both peoples spoke the same language, as Caesar and Tacitus in some measure agree, on the basis of various words which ancient writers attest were in use among the Gauls and which the Welsh — the genuine remnant of the ancient Britons — still retain. Boxhorn recently undertook to weave the same web further, with the help of Davis's Lexicon, in his Gallic Origins.

III. We have said that the inhabitants of the islands of Europe are descended from the sons and posterity of Japheth. Now his firstborn son was called Gomer. Most hold that the Cimbri are descended from him. The Welsh, who alone are the genuine posterity of the ancient Britons, call themselves Kymroes — that is, Gomerians — and call their nation Cumro, and their language Cumraec. From this Camden argues that the ancient Britons were Cimbri, and that they crossed over here from neighbouring Gaul, since the Gauls, Cimbri, and Celts are one and the same. Add to this that Gomer means "ending" or "completing," from a root meaning "to end" — as if there were an omen in the very culmination of his genealogy, that he had been foreordained to occupy the ends of the earth. These things are indeed quite plausible, and I shall embrace them until someone teaches better. It should not, however, pass unnoticed that most of the Britons think they are called Kymroes or Cambros, and that Cambros comes from Cambria — the name given to that part of the island which fell by lot to Camber, the son of Brutus. We leave all these matters in the same state in which we found them, content to have reported them where no more certain account is available.

IV. So much regarding the inhabitants themselves. The name of Britain is very ancient. Many etymologies of it have been devised by various persons, most of them false if not all, and some of them ridiculous. Eliota, a noble and learned man, in the dictionary which Cooper published with his additions, holds that Britain was named from the Greek word prytaneia. The prytanis at Athens was the director of the marketplace; and the prytaneia was that Prytanic dignity; and they also sometimes used prytaneia to mean public markets. Since the Greeks therefore perceived that this island abounded in goods suitable for trade, they called it prytaneia, from which the name Britannia arose. But this conjecture errs in many ways: first, it renders these islands not merely known to the most ancient Greeks but quite familiar to them, whereas Herodotus testifies that he did not know from where tin was brought, which they obtained from no other source than these islands. Then, although I would by no means agree with Camden that these regions were entirely unknown to the Greeks before Caesar's arrival, I have no doubt that they were called British long before anyone could pretend that Athenians had landed here, since their prytaneia was a comparatively recent institution. Balaeus derives the British name from Brytona, a Cretan nymph who, to escape the violence of Minos attempting to dishonour her, threw herself headlong into the waters. Lying Greece will supply six hundred fables of this kind to anyone who asks. Bede derives it from a Britannia in Gaul — formerly called Armorica — which received its name from Britons who crossed over there from here. But the folly of all is surpassed by the madness of Goropius Becanus, who wishes Britain to be called as if "Bri-danium" — that is, as he himself interprets it, "free Denmark" — when the name of Britain was celebrated throughout the entire world before the name of Denmark or the Danes was known or even existed. Humfredus Lluddus derives the name from Prid and Cain, two little British words meaning "bright form." Of this conjecture, I know of no one who supports it, though it is not more absurd than those others which have found their champions.

V. With all these rejected, two etymologies of this name remain which still maintain their standing, supported by the votes of learned men. The first is that which rests upon the history of the arrival on this island of Brutus, who was of Trojan blood; for it was once believed that the island was called Britain, and its inhabitants Britons, from him. It is an old opinion, and one which has obtained mention in certain public acts of the kings of this island. Yet most of the more recent scholars think that this entire history, having been attacked and displaced by Camden and Eliota, should finally be reckoned of no account. I shall join them wholeheartedly in this judgment, once I have something established regarding a different account of the name. The second is Camden's own, who asserts that the name flowed from Brith, a British word. Brith, as he says, means "painted" or "stained"; and Davis indeed renders it in his dictionary as "variegated" or "spotted." When the Greek termination Tania is added to this word, it produces "Britannia." Certainly many have recorded that the Britons customarily painted themselves, and that from this the Romans called them Picti (Painted Men). Caesar himself, in Book 5 of the Gallic War, ch. 14, narrates that "all the Britons stain themselves with vitrum" (a word variously emended by various editors as nitro, luteo, glauco, glasto, ultro, guasto) "which produces a blue color, and this makes them more terrifying in appearance in battle." Many have therefore adopted Camden's view. George Hornius, a most learned man, in his preface to Boxhorn's Gallic Origins, boldly declares — as if the matter were beyond dispute — that the inhabitants were called Britons because they painted their entire bodies, since in their own language, that is Cimbric, Prith (meaning Brith) signifies "painted." But if one may respectfully disagree with that eminent promoter of British antiquities, I confess that I cannot subscribe to this conjecture — partly for other reasons, and partly also because in expounding it that otherwise great and exceedingly learned man contradicted himself. For by whom, I ask, were the inhabitants of these islands called Britten, from Brith, meaning "painted"? By themselves? But Camden himself showed — and it is most true — that they called themselves, and had always called themselves, nothing other than Cymeroes, and their language Cymraec; and the same learned man proves from this that they are descended from the ancient Cimbri. By the Greeks themselves? But he declares that these islands were entirely unknown to the Greeks before the age of Caesar, at least in the days of Polybius of Megalopolis, and he maintains that none of the Greeks knew what kind of mortals inhabited these shores, whether painted or neatly dressed. He would have us believe, therefore, that the Greeks, when they observed that the inhabitants of this island stained their bodies with a blue color, learned from them how "painted" was said in their language, and added to that word the termination Tania, from which Britannia flowed — when they did not yet know what kind of mortals, fair or dark, had settled there. Nor would the Greeks have lacked words in their own language to express "painted" and "a painted people," if the derivation of the word must be sought from them. Since therefore it is certain that the Britons never called themselves Britten or "the painted," from "Brith" meaning "painted," but consistently called themselves Cymeros, and since this island was called Britain long before the Greeks knew who or what mortals inhabited it, and since the composition of the name seems absurd — in which the Greek termination far outweighs the Cimbric foundation — to say nothing of the fact that it does not seem to me altogether true that all Britons were called or actually were "painted" (for although Caesar testifies that all stained themselves with a blue color, he does not thereby say they were Picti, and it is well known that there was a people inhabiting Caledonia who were specifically called "Picti") — I cannot deny that all the hope I had for some time entertained of gathering something certain about the origin of the British name from this eminent man's conjecture has been cut away.

VI. Samuel Bochart, a man most learned in every respect, brings forward a new conjecture to untangle the truth, in his Geographia Sacra, Part 2, ch. 39. For after he has shown that these islands surrounded by the ocean were known to the Greeks and were called the Cassiterides from the lead and tin with which they most abundantly abound, he teaches that this island was also known to the Tyrians and was for the same reason called "barat anac," meaning "field" or "land of tin"; and from this, he shows, the name Britannia appears to have flowed among Greeks and Latins. The matter is too long for me to dwell upon while I have other things to attend to. I will briefly say what I think: whether because — when all the other etymologies, considered carefully and at length, are either wholly displeasing or less pleasing — this conjecture of that eminent man recommends itself by its very novelty, or whether because the mind senses that some light of truth shines forth from it amid the greatest darkness, I confess that it pleases me more than all the others. I know that this derivation of the British name has been attacked and rejected by the most learned George Hornius, in his "Introduction to Ancient Geography" and in his "Preface to the Gallic Origins" of Boxhorn. On what grounds? On this ground, namely, that the Phoenicians only very late — and that after other peoples in the seventh or eighth place, among whom were some Greeks — obtained mastery of the sea and sailed into these waters. And so by the same effort he seeks both to reject the etymology of Britain and to overthrow and demolish the foundation of several other things which Bochart seemed to me to have unearthed from darkness with heroic effort and with marvellous success. I do not wish to put my sickle into another man's harvest; I will only say that it seems to me remarkable that any man relying on the authority and credibility of the Greeks could bring himself to believe that the Phoenicians, who had actually

brought colonies into Greece itself, some centuries before the Greeks anywhere

had set foot beyond their own borders, had come to know the seas of the world only late in comparison with them.

VII. Whatever ultimately may be the true origin of the name of this island, whoever the most ancient inhabitants may have been, it is most certain that the Britons were most deeply polluted by idolatrous superstition. Yet from the most remote antiquity, the priestly overseers of British sacred rites were more widely known — inasmuch as their discipline spread far and wide among other nations — than the very deities which the Britons worshipped through their ministry. These were the Druidae or Druides, of whom we must treat hereafter. That they "taught that one God is to be worshipped," Origen affirms in his commentary on Ezekiel chap. iv. If that is true, this one god was the Sun itself, not the most holy Creator of heaven and earth, the knowledge of whom the savage superstition of the Druids was very far from possessing. To this they added the Moon, worshipped by women. Hence Dio, Hist. lib. lxii, records that Boadicea, raising her hand toward heaven, said: "I give thanks to you, Andraste" (perhaps Astarte), "and I, a woman, invoke you as woman to woman." The Moon was commonly regarded as queen of heaven and, among the Britons, as the bestower of victory. And because they worshipped the heavenly bodies, Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, relates that they poured out their prayers with hands raised to the sky — as does Dio regarding Boadicea. Caesar affirms, in lib. vi of the Gallic War, chap. xii, that the superstition of the Druids originated in Britain: "The discipline," he says, "is believed to have been discovered in Britain and to have been brought over from there into Gaul; and now those who wish to study it more carefully generally travel there for the purpose of learning." Tacitus also adds, in order to prove that the Gauls had occupied the neighboring territory: "You may recognize their sacred rites by the persuasion of the superstitions." Caesar reports that the Gauls worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. We have shown elsewhere that both the names and the worship of these deities they received from the Greek inhabitants of Massilia. From them also they learned the use of images and statues, which was unknown to the ancient Gauls, as Lucan attests: "And the gloomy images of the gods"

Lack all art, and stand as shapeless forms hewn from felled trunks.

The very site, and the squalor of the now rotting wood, make men awe-struck.

" — Lib. iii. v. 412. The superstition of these images, therefore, never invaded Britain. The most ancient deities of the Gauls, shared by them with the Britons, were those which the same Lucan mentions, lib. i. 444:—

"And those whom fierce Teutates is appeased with dreadful blood,

Teutates, and Esus bristling at his savage altars, and Taranis, whose altar is no milder than that of Scythian Diana." Some hold that Teutates derived from Duw Taith. These are British words signifying "guide of the journey." We showed above, however, that nearly all the nations dispersed from Babylon worshipped the Sun as the guide of their journeys and wanderings. That the idol of Moloch among the Ammonites was the Sun, all the learned agree. We will describe his rites in our exposition of Jewish idolatry. Almost nowhere in the superstition of the nations does anything equal or similar to these things occur, except for what Caesar has preserved in memory concerning the Gauls, who received all religious worship from the Britons, in the Gallic War, lib. vi. chap. xvi: "They have," he says, "images of immense size, whose limbs, woven from wicker, they fill with living men; and when these are set on fire, the men, surrounded by the flames, perish." Teutates, therefore, is the Sun. Who Esus was is uncertain; and so that you may see the uncertainty of conjectures: Gosselinus, in Bochart, derives the name from the Hebrew word chizzus, meaning "the strong one"; Camden derives it from Haud, a British word meaning "dog."

VIII. Taranis is derived from Tarande, that is, "thunder"; thus it is called in Welsh, as "thonder" in English, "donder" among the Belgians; hence "dondersdag" and "thundersday" or "thursday." They understood thereby some deity presiding over the air; unless perhaps we should suppose it was so called from Tarzan, which means a shield or buckler. But I would prefer to derive it from Taran, because it was customary to appease him with the most savage victims.

IX. That they worshipped any anthropomorphic gods, there is no testimony or memory whatever. Yet in the course of time they placed various images alongside these idols, as Gildas attests: "In Britain," he says, "there are diabolical portents themselves, almost surpassing the number of those in Egypt, some of whose features we still behold with grim countenances, stiffened in their customary manner, within or outside the desolate walls." Nor are many more things recorded concerning the idols of the Britons, although without doubt the chaos of superstition among them was very great. But the superstition of these islands was better known from its ministers than from its gods; of these, therefore, we must treat.

X. The Druides or Druid presided over British sacred rites. By that name they were renowned throughout the entire Celtic, or Cimbrian, nation. Diogenes Laertius, in the Proem of his work, says: "Among the Celts and Galatians are those called Druids." We showed previously from Caesar that Britain gave origin to this order of men and to this superstition. Scholars do not agree on the etymology of the word. Most uncertain are the things related concerning Dryide and his successor Bardo, kings of the Celts, and other matters which Balzus collected. Montanus says that Dry means "magician," and that from this the Druids were so named by the Greeks because they were magi. Vossius holds that the name derived from Dru, or Trou, a German word meaning veracious and faithful, as the English "true" signifies. The more common, and without doubt the truer, derivation of the word is that which Pliny first transmitted, in lib. xvi. chap. last: "Nothing," he says, "is more sacred to the Druids than mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided it is an oak. They choose oak groves for their own sake, and they perform no sacred rite without that foliage, so that from this they might also seem, by Greek interpretation, to be called Druids." For apis means "oak"; and Druids comes from drus. Add to this that dru sounds the same in British. That the Druids performed their sacred rites in oak groves and oak forests, all acknowledge. "Groves cut down, sacred to savage superstitions," says Tacitus, Annals lib. xiv. chap. xxx. For the same reason also they were called Saronides.

Diodorus, lib. v. chap. 31, says they call the theologians Saronides — from the oaks, that is. Hence Callimachus, Hymn to Jupiter: "Certainly the wet Jao bore many oaks from above." On which passage the scholiast writes, "Saronidas drus" — that is, Saronides from the oak — and subjoins the reasoning of the word. Maximus of Tyre also attests that the sign of Jupiter among the Celts was the tallest oak. XI. Whether the Bards were Druids assigned to a particular function, or a different class of men, is uncertain. Lucan celebrates their office, lib. i. 447:—

"You also, O bards, who commit to the long ages the brave souls that perished in war with your praises, poured forth in safety your many songs." And Marcellinus: "The Bards sang in heroic verses the illustrious deeds of brave men, accompanied by the sweet strains of the lyre." And before him Diodorus, as above: "There are also among them," he says, "lyric poets whom they call Bards." Similarly Possidonius also, in Athenaeus, lib. vi: "Their attendants are those called Bards, who are poets, and they happen upon their praises by singing." There are also still among the Cambro-Britons some occupied with composing verses and genealogies, whom they call bards.

XII. Strabo, lib. iv, distributes the priestly overseers of sacred rites among the Celts into three classes: namely, Bards, Vates, and Druids. He would have spoken more accurately had he said two classes of seers, Bards and Druids; for he assigns to the Vates those things which were proper to the Druids. For he says: "The Vates sacrifice and contemplate or teach the nature of things." We have shown from Caesar that the Druids presided over all sacred rites.

XIII. The Druids made use of a distinctive attire by which they might draw the veneration of the common people to themselves. Johannes Theophilus reports that he found this attire depicted in six stone images. "They were," he says, "each seven feet tall, bare-footed, with heads uncovered; wearing a Greek-style hooded cloak and a travelling-cloak, with a beard hanging down to the groin and forked around the nostrils; in their hands a book and a Diogenes-style staff; with stern brow and gloomy eyebrow, and with head bowed, fixing their eyes upon the ground." In their sacred rites they wore white garments, as Pliny testifies, lib. xvi, last chapter: "The priest, clothed in a white garment, climbs the tree; with a golden sickle he cuts it down; it is received in a white cloak." They established their schools of learning in sacred groves. "Lofty forests, groves inhabited by remote dwellers." — Lucan, lib. i, 453.

XIV. In these groves they had schools filled with eager youth: "To them," says Caesar, as cited above, ch. 13., "a great number of young men flock for the sake of instruction." Mela also, lib. iii. ch. ii, says: "They teach the noblest of the nation many things, secretly and for as long as twenty years." So many

238 THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF IDOLATRY. [Book 3. years spent in studies before being advanced to the doctorate, Caesar testifies. "Some," he says, "remain in instruction for twenty years." The attractions of the studies, the privileges of the students, and the supreme authority of those advanced: "The Druids," says the same Caesar, "are accustomed to be absent from war, nor do they pay tribute together with the rest; they have exemption from military service and immunity from all obligations. Stirred up by such great rewards, many come to the discipline of their own accord, and are sent by their relatives and parents." We shall shortly see their authority. The same author describes their method of instruction: "They are said to learn a great number of verses by heart; and they do not think it right to commit these things" (sacred matters) "to writing, although in nearly all other matters, both public and private accounts, they use Greek letters. It seems to me," he says, "that they have established this practice for two reasons: because they do not wish the discipline to be spread among the common people, and because they do not want those who learn, relying on writing, to give less diligent attention to memory — which happens to most people, that, relying on the support of writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly and their memory." Caesar, as cited above, ch. 14. They cultivated a varied and nearly universal philosophy. Pliny attributes magic to them, lib. xxx. ch. i: "But why should I," he says, "recall these things in an art that has crossed even the ocean and advanced to the void of nature? Britain to this day celebrates it with astonishment, with such great ceremonies that it might seem to have given it to the Persians."

XV. They were also physicians, as the same Pliny testifies, lib. xxx. ch. i: "The principate of Tiberius Caesar abolished the Druids, and this class of soothsayers and physicians." That they practiced medicine mingled with magic, the same author teaches, lib. xvi. ch. 44.

XVI. In theology they taught many peculiar things, some of them excellent. Lucan notes that they had wisdom uniquely and separately from others, lib. i. 450:

"And you, O Druids, having laid aside your arms, returned to the barbaric rites and sinister custom of your sacred things: to you alone it is given to know the gods and the divine powers of heaven, or to you alone not to know them."

The chief dogma of their theology was that souls do not perish, nor does the world. "They declare souls and the world to be immortal," says Strabo — "They hold that souls and the world are immortal." And Caesar, as cited above, ch. 14.: "Above all they wish to persuade men that souls do not perish, but after death pass from some to others; and they think that by this belief men are greatly stirred to valor, with the fear of death set aside." These words of Caesar Lucan thus expresses, lib. i. 454:

"On your authority, O shades, the souls do not seek the silent halls of Erebus and the pale realms of deep Dis; the same spirit governs limbs in another world; death, if what you sing is truly known, is but the mid-point of a long life. Surely the peoples over whom the North Star looks down are happy in their error, those whom the greatest of fears — the dread of death — does not oppress; hence the readiness of mind among those men to rush upon the sword, and souls capable of death, and the cowardice of sparing a life that shall return."

They also taught that the world would ultimately be destroyed by fire and water. "Destruction by fire and water," as Strabo says — it is doubtful whether the minds of those were rightly understood who perhaps, from ancient tradition, taught that the world was once destroyed by water and is to be consumed again by fire.

XVII. They also devoted themselves to eloquence and rhetoric. "The Druids, however," says Mela, lib. iii. ch. ii, "have their own eloquence and their own teachers of wisdom." And to no one is the symbolic image of Hercules Ogmius unknown.

XVIII. To theology they also added geography and astronomy. The same Mela: "These men profess to know the size and shape of the earth and the world, the motions of the heavens and of the stars." And Caesar himself, as cited above, ch. xiv.: "They dispute and hand down to the youth much concerning the stars and their movements, the size of the world and of the lands, and concerning the nature of things" (natural philosophy). To these they added ethics, as Diogenes testifies, Proem. sect. 6: "They say that the Druids philosophize obscurely and by maxims" (to be learned by heart, of course) "worshipping the gods, doing no evil, and practicing courage."

XIX. Since they were very numerous, they maintained among themselves such an order that one presided over all the rest as pope. "When this one dies," says Caesar, as cited above, ch. xiii.: "if any one among the rest excels in dignity, he succeeds; but if there are several of equal standing, the matter is decided by the vote of the Druids; sometimes they even contend for the chief position by arms" — which we know to have happened also at Rome among Christians.

XX. But the same author teaches us with what grace and authority they prevailed among the peoples. "They," he says, "are present at divine matters, they arrange public and private sacrifices, they interpret religious observances. They decide on nearly all public and private controversies; and if any crime has been committed, if a murder has been done, if there is a dispute about inheritance or boundaries, they are the ones who judge and impose penalties." Thus, meddling in others' affairs, they intruded themselves under the pretext of religion into all public and private matters, while they themselves were meanwhile exempt from every duty owed to the commonwealth, tending their own power in another's domain. But since they did not ordinarily bear the office of magistrate, and therefore had neither the rods nor the axes nor the power of life and death — which are entirely necessary for exacting obedience — it may rightly be asked how they compelled the peoples to remain within the bounds of duty and to be obedient to them in all things. To this inconvenience, therefore, relief was supplied by the invention of a politico-religious excommunication; and thus a certain Caesareo-papal authority was made complete. "If anyone," the same Caesar says, "whether a private person or a public one, has not abided by their decree, they forbid him from the sacrifices. This penalty is among them the most severe. Those thus forbidden are reckoned in the number of the impious and the wicked; all withdraw from them, flee their approach and their conversation, lest they receive some harm from contact with them;

nor is justice granted to them when they seek it, nor is any honor shared with them." There is no one, or he is of no account, who does not understand that this entire mystery of iniquity was long ago carried over into Christianity.

XXI. There remain the sacred rites and the worship of the gods. These were varied and nearly all of them monstrous. After Caesar's first landing on this island and his withdrawal — or rather his flight — "the Britons, performing various sacrifices, gave themselves to the slaughter of cattle; they offered there forty thousand oxen, and a hundred thousand sheep, and birds of various kinds which could not easily be counted, and besides these thirty thousand wild beasts of every kind that had been gathered." These are the words of Geoffrey, book 1, chapter 24; that is, a man of the most reckless audacity and shamelessness in fabricating anything. The chief thing recorded about the sacrifices of the Druids by trustworthy authors is human sacrifice. There were indeed two kinds of human victims among them: the first was private, namely when someone devoted either himself or another for the salvation of a third party. "Those who are afflicted with more serious diseases, and those who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims or vow that they will sacrifice themselves, and they employ the Druids as ministers for these sacrifices; for they believe that unless a human life is given in return for a human life, the divine power of the immortal gods cannot otherwise be appeased," says Caesar, in the same work, chapter 16. This, however, as is evident from Strabo and others, was the form of that immolation. When the victim was brought to the altar, the priest sprinkled wine — or, where this was lacking, some other liquid — on its forehead; then, seizing the foremost hairs with his left hand, he poured libations into the fire, at the same time performing prayers or vows to the gods, and then the victim itself was struck with a sword, as Cluverius observes. The second kind was public, and not unlike, as we noted before, the worship of Moloch in the East. "And publicly," says Caesar in the same place, "they have images of immense size, whose limbs, woven of wicker, they fill with living men; these being set on fire, the men, surrounded by the flame, are killed." So much he says about the Gauls, who received the Druids themselves and this entire superstition from the Britons. Strabo likewise says in book 4: a man struck down with a sword while they watched his death-throes for purposes of divination — and this not without the Druids — and other forms of human sacrifice are mentioned; for they would shoot some with arrows, and crucify them in the temples, and constructing a large figure, they would herd cattle of all sorts and various animals and men into it and burn them. Beyond the one mentioned by Caesar, he here records three other kinds of public sacrifice in which men were sacrificed: for either those to be sacrificed were struck with a sword, or they were pierced with arrows, or they were even put on crosses; and to these he adds that custom of burning men enclosed in colossal images. Yet another kind of death used in these sacrifices is recorded by Diodorus, book 5, chapter 32. The criminals, he says, they keep for five years and then impale them on stakes as a sacrifice to the gods, and together with many other first-fruits they burn them on

great pyres—"Criminals kept for five years they sacrifice to the gods, fixed upon stakes, and together with other first-fruits they burn them on great pyres." By fire, therefore, by sword, by arrows, by the cross, by sharpened stakes, they dispatched those to be sacrificed as they pleased. Nor was this crime perpetrated only against the guilty: "They also descend to the punishment of the innocent," says Caesar in the same place. And with what savage ferocity the Britons conducted themselves in public sacrifices, Dio testifies in book 62 of his Histories: to the captive men under her command nothing of the most terrible kind failed to happen. And the most terrible and most brutal thing they did was this: they stripped naked the noblest and most distinguished women, and cut off their breasts and sewed them to their mouths, so that they appeared to be eating them, and after this they impaled the women on sharp stakes driven lengthwise through their whole bodies; and all these things they did while simultaneously performing sacred rites, feasting, and behaving wantonly, both in their other temples and especially in the grove of Andatae—that is, "But the men who were captured suffered every extremity. And the most cruel and most savage thing was this: they hung up the noblest and most virtuous women naked, and cut off their breasts and sewed them to their own mouths, so that they seemed to eat them. Then they ran stakes sharpened at the end through their whole bodies lengthwise; and all these things they did while at the same time performing sacred rites, feasting, and conducting themselves wantonly, both in other sacred places and especially in the grove of Andatae." And such slaves of Satan were we Britons.

XXII. On account of these unspeakable sacrifices the Romans attempted to abolish the entire superstition of the Druids. Strabo concerning the Gauls, book 4, chapter 4: "The Romans turned them away from these things, and from the rites of sacrifice and divination that were contrary to our customs"—that is, "The Romans led them away from these practices and from the rites of sacrifice and divination which were in conflict with our laws." And Suetonius in his Life of Claudius, chapter 25: "The religion of the Druids among the Gauls, being of dire savagery and only forbidden to Roman citizens under Augustus, he utterly abolished." That is, he intended to do so in Gaul, but in vain; the seat and origin of the superstition, Britain, was left untouched. The Druids were slain only on the island of Mona, and the groves were cut down by Suetonius Paulinus. Tacitus narrates the event in the Annals, book 14, chapter 30: "There stood," he says, "on the shore a battle-line of varied composition, dense with arms and men, with women rushing between the ranks, and Druids round about, pouring out dreadful prayers with hands raised to heaven; and the novelty of the sight struck the soldiers with such awe that, as though their limbs were paralyzed, they offered their motionless bodies to be wounded. Then, at the exhortations of their general, and urging one another not to be frightened by a womanish and fanatical band, they advanced the standards, cut down all who opposed them, and wrapped them in their own fire. A garrison was then placed over the vanquished, and the groves sacred to savage superstitions were cut down: for they considered it lawful to drench their altars with the blood of captives and to consult their gods through human entrails."

XXIII. But God in His mercy at last gradually removed this impious superstition through the heavenly truth of the Christian religion. Although this island was "entirely cut off from the whole world," and from the fountain of the waters

of the sanctuary, which went out to heal the nations—most remote from it—yet God graciously arranging this matter, the heralds and preachers of divine grace were brought to it almost from the very cradle of the gospel. That Peter preached the gospel here is asserted by Simeon Metaphrastes and the Menologium; that Paul did so, by Theodoret and Sophronius; that Simon the Zealot did, by Dorotheus; that Aristobulus—whom Paul mentions in the Epistle to the Romans—did, by Nicephorus; that Joseph of Arimathea did, nearly all assert, especially the more recent among our own countrymen: Bale, Parker, Fox, Camden, and others; and about Joseph scarcely anyone doubts. From this, the most ancient Christian writers, Tertullian and Origen, record that Britain received the Christian faith: Origen in his Commentary on Ezekiel, chapter 4; Tertullian in his book Against the Jews, chapter 7. Martial also celebrates Claudia Rufina, a British woman of the highest nobility and learning, in book 11, Epigram 54: "Since Claudia Rufina is sprung from the blue-painted Britons, why does she have the heart of the Latin people? What beauty of form! Italian mothers can believe her Roman, Attic ones their own." That this was the same Claudia whom Paul mentions (2 Timothy 4:21), learned men believe, and the dates agree. Add to this that he associates her with Pudens, whom the same Martial also celebrates in book 7, Epigram 10: "You compel me with my own pen and hand

To correct my little books, Pudens.

O! how exceedingly you approve of me and love me, who wish to possess the originals of my trifles."

XXIV. Very many have written that King Lucius also, to whom is attributed a letter to Pope Eleutherius along with Eleutherius's reply, was the first of all kings to embrace the Christian faith; just as no fewer have reported that Philip the Arab was the first Christian emperor. But to speak freely, as befits one for whom nothing is more precious than truth, I frankly confess that it has been a long time since the credibility not only of the entire history concerning this Lucius, but at least of that epistolary exchange and of many other things commonly attached to the histories, has been, to my mind, highly suspect.

XXV. The history was first committed to memory, as far as I know, by Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History, book 1, chapter 4. He states that Lucius wrote to Eleutherius in the year of the Chronicle 156. Nauclerus follows him; but Baronius demonstrates in his Annals that Eleutherius did not preside over the Roman church before the year of Christ 178. There is therefore an error in the assignment of the date. Henry of Erfurt reports that this occurred in the year 196, the nineteenth year of the Emperor Verus (who by no means reigned that many years). Ado, in his Chronicle, arranges the time more correctly, and writes that Eleutherius lived and governed the Roman church under the Emperor Commodus, which is true; for the end of the third year of Eleutherius falls at the beginning of the reign of Commodus. Let this, then, be the time at which that epistolary exchange between King Lucius and Eleutherius occurred, if it ever occurred at all. Geoffrey of Monmouth narrates at length the success of the undertaking. "Without delay," he says, "the peoples of the nations flocking from all sides follow the king's example and, cleansed in the same baptism, are restored to the heavenly kingdom. The blessed teachers, therefore (namely Fugatius and Damianus, sent from Rome by Eleutherius), having destroyed paganism throughout nearly the whole island, dedicated to the one God and His saints the temples that had been founded in honor of many gods, and filled them with various bands of ordained ministers. There were at that time in Britain twenty-eight flamens and three archflamens. To their authority the other judges on the island were subject. These, by apostolic command, they rescued from idolatry, and where there had been flamens they placed bishops, and where there had been archflamens they placed archbishops. Now the seats of the archflamens had been in three of the nobler cities, namely in London, in York, and in the City of the Legions, which old walls and buildings testify to have been situated above the river Usk in Glamorgan. To these three, then, the superstition being done away with, twenty-eight bishops are subordinated." So much for Geoffrey, who never knew what it was to be ashamed. How childishly he fabricated all this will immediately be apparent. The British superstition had no more flamens or archflamens than Geoffrey of Monmouth had. Moreover, I would not deny that he rightly exposed the origin of that distinction among the ministers of Christian worship, the Roman church itself acknowledging it in the Decretals, part 1, distinction 21: "Among priests," they say, "a certain gradation has been maintained, so that some are called simply priests, others archpresbyters, others chorepiscopi, others bishops, others archbishops or metropolitans, others primates, others patriarchs, others supreme pontiffs; this gradation was introduced chiefly by the Gentiles, who called their own flamens some simply flamens, others archflamens, others protoflamens." So speaks the author of the distinction, nakedly and openly. More modest, and within the bounds of propriety, is the more learned Leland. "It remains," he says, "for me to indicate the circumstance that removed so great a superstition from the midst. By Roman edict it was provided that no use or esteem of the Druid religion should be displayed in the provinces. Yet the barbarian peoples tenaciously retained the ancestral rites received from the Druids themselves ages before; until Christ the best and greatest Savior, having dispersed the darkness of errors and gross ignorance, poured out a light conspicuous to all the world, with His Spirit as guide. Then that great Lucius, the immortal glory of the Britons, spurning the discipline of the Druids, willingly desired that the gospel teaching should be shared by all his people. Therefore Elvanus and Meduinus, noble British ambassadors, were sent by Lucius to Eleutherius at Rome; and Fugatius together with Damianus, sent back here from Rome, firmly established the religion that shall never die, God in His favor so willing." Certain Bavarians add, as Bale testifies in his British Writers, Century 1, chapter 29, that this Lucius afterward undertook the apostolate and converted their nation to the faith, and they count it to their praise that they were converted by a great king; but our own countrymen object, affirming that Lucius never set foot outside his own kingdom, but died at Gloucester in the twelfth year of his reign. The most learned Camden (whose footsteps Selden follows in his Anglo-British Analects) yields to the common prejudice. For after he had most carefully compiled and set lucidly before all eyes the history of those times from the most trustworthy historians, showing that British affairs had been in such a state and condition from the days of Claudius Caesar, who had reduced the island to the form of a province, that there was no room at all for such a king as this Lucius is imagined to have been who held the whole island under his sway, he nonetheless prudently judged that the history itself should be inserted into his work — a history which the very sequence of facts and times that he laid out cries out must be entirely rejected.

XXVI. To uproot from the minds of men so great an opinion, so deeply implanted, so ancient, is not within our ability or our purpose. But since falsehood has no strong foundation or force anywhere, if I first obtain from readers what is most fair — that they bring no prejudice to the matter — I have no doubt that I shall persuade the lovers of truth that my suspicion, which is not mine alone, has causes sufficiently just — indeed, most weighty.

XXVII. Britain, which had been attempted almost in vain twice by Julius Caesar, neglected by Augustus and Tiberius — whose ocean-shells Caligula, surrounded by a vast army, had cast up on the Gallic shore as spoils of a triumph — worn down by civil wars and factional strife while its inhabitants obeyed various kings, was attacked by the emperor Claudius Caesar through the praetor Aulus Plautius, reduced to the form of a province, and handed over to Plautius to govern. Dio and Suetonius give a lengthy account of the deeds performed by him in this island. The glory of this victory was so great in those times that the senate decreed not only the name "Britannicus" and a most splendid triumph for Claudius himself, but also an ovation for Plautius, and triumphal ornaments for Vespasian, who pursued the remnants of the war. Nor do later writers celebrate less his adding of that province to the empire. Thus Seneca the Tragedian, in Octavia, Act I: "To whom the whole world beyond the ocean submitted, and to whom the Britons freely gave themselves, unknown before to our commanders, and lords of their own law."

To these he soon adds: "Behold, he who first laid the yoke upon the Britons, who covered with so great fleets the unknown straits, and was safe amid barbarous peoples and savage seas."

The first verse was commonly read as:

"Behold, he who first reached the mouth of the Don," etc.

"Behold, he who upon the Britons" — Scaliger restored this reading in his notes on Tibullus, but without doubt the correct reading is: "Behold, he who first laid the yoke upon the mouth of the Thames" — since Claudius was the first to cross the Thames, as noted by the most learned Camden. Annaeus Seneca had earlier sung of this same Claudius, in his Apocolocyntosis of the Emperor Claudius:

"He commanded the Britons to bow their necks to chains beyond the known world, and the very shores of the sea to tremble; he brought new laws of Rome with the axe, and made the Brigantes tremble before the dark-blue ocean."

Most elegant also are those epigrams which that great Scaliger brought forth in his Catalecta. It is fitting to append some of them: "A land never violated by Ausonian triumphs, struck by your thunderbolt, Caesar, has fallen. And the ocean looks beyond itself at your altars: what is the end of the world will not be the end of your empire. A people conquered before by none, now at last beheld in triumph, lies unspoiled as a trophy to your honor. Long a legend, hidden in the middle sea, it has now freely bowed its neck to the conqueror. Britain, free, that suffered neither enemy nor king, that lies far off from our world for ever — made happy by adversity and burdened by prosperous fortune, it will be common to us and to you, Caesar. Father Mars, and Quirinus, guardian of our race, and Caesar, both placed under the great Pole Star — behold the Britons, unknown before, now under Latin law: the sun turns back this side of our empire." The Britons, however, again in turmoil on account of civil strife among the petty kings who had submitted to the Roman yoke (for it is a Galfridian dream, and one that no one but he would dream, that one king ruled the island in Caesar's day or thereafter), were suppressed by that same Claudius through the propraetor P. Ostorius. Tacitus has given an accurate record of that war. Under the reign of Nero, the whole nation, and all the peoples in it, stirred up by the wrongs and high spirit of Boadicea, queen of the Iceni — both very great — bravely and vigorously, but in vain, attempted to throw off the Roman yoke from their necks and recover their ancestral liberty. The end of the war, under the administration of Suetonius Paulinus, was the destruction and enslavement of the nation. After Nero's death, while Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian held almost the entire world torn apart by civil war, the Silures, the Ordovices, and other peoples took such courage upon themselves that they gave occasion to that most disastrous war, by which Julius Agricola the propraetor — father-in-law of Tacitus the historian — reduced the whole island to Roman power and compelled it to use Roman law and statutes, with only one petty king left in some part of the island with a precarious authority — namely Cogidunus — so that they might have a king as an instrument of servitude even there. In that war Galgacus was defeated, the last of the Britons. A certain northern part of the island, being rugged and unfruitful, was left to the barbarians; the rest Agricola reduced to a province fully and completely, as Camden puts it, and, as Tacitus testifies, handed it over to his successor quiet and secure. The royal name, and all that authority of petty kings which the peoples had previously revered, being abolished, Britain became an imperial garrisoned province, subject to the Caesars. It was at rest under Nerva's reign; Spartianus records that Trajan brought some who had defected back into order. Hadrian checked the barbarians who were attacking the province from the northern parts of the island with war and raids, by erecting a wall eighty miles long — as that same Spartianus relates. Nor was the rule of the Antonines, of Pius and of the Philosopher, on this island free from wars and disturbances; yet all these were suppressed by the valor of Lollius Urbicus and Calphurnius Agricola. Even under Commodus's reign, everything in the province itself was for a time filled with seditions; and the barbarian peoples, crossing the wall, caused the greatest trouble to both Romans and Britons, and on several occasions inflicted great slaughters on the inhabitants who dwelt nearest to the wall. But all was pacified by the arrival of Ulpius Marcellus, as Dio and Lampridius report, so that until the very death of Commodus nothing appears to have been attempted against the Roman peace. In this state and condition of British affairs, I confess frankly, such is my dullness, I cannot see where that Lucius was, who held this whole island — as he is called in the letter of Eleutherius — as sole deputy under God alone; for it is all too probable that he was not in our Britain at all. It is clearly a different island that he distributed among archbishops and bishops with the consent of the British nobles; a different London, a different York, over which he presided — for these of ours were subject to Roman rule.

XXVIII. Cardinal Baronius adds many things on this matter at A.D. 183, where he brings forward and defends this account of Lucius. First, then, he says: "The Romans never gained possession of all Britain before these times; but it is clear that very many unsubdued peoples remained in it, who often gave the Roman armies trouble. And again, it is certain that those very peoples in Britain who were subdued by the Romans very frequently defected and rebelled completely. For, to pass over mention of more remote times, it is indeed established, on the authority of Julius Capitolinus, that a British war broke out under Marcus Aurelius, but that it was suppressed by Calphurnius Agricola, who was sent there by Marcus. And again after the death of Marcus it was renewed under Commodus, to such a degree that the Britons (as Lampridius writes) wished to set up another emperor against him, refusing altogether to obey Commodus; but the same author affirms that everything was quieted by the generals. Dio further adds to these things that the British war in the times of Commodus was the greatest of all, but was utterly extinguished by Ulpius Marcellus."

XXIX. It is remarkable that Baronius, a most learned and careful man, did not notice that these arguments are both self-contradictory, and where they contain truth, they strike at the throat of the very case he has undertaken to defend. They are self-contradictory, for they imply that Lucius reigned among the peoples unsubdued by the Romans, and among those who frequently defected from Roman rule, and who wished to set up another emperor against Commodus. For these were plainly distinct groups. The peoples called unsubdued by the Romans were barbarians outside the wall, and they alone. Those who repeatedly rebelled against the Romans were the provincial Britons. Those who wished to set up another emperor were the Roman garrison soldiers — so that it is plainly impossible that one and the same person ruled over all of these. Moreover, Baronius cuts his own throat with his own sword when, on the testimony of Dio, he shows that the British war was utterly extinguished under Commodus by Ulpius Marcellus, and therefore that the whole province had peacefully submitted to Roman power. For in this state of affairs, as we showed earlier, it was impossible for Lucius to hold a kingdom in the province; nor will anyone who knows what a Roman garrisoned province is ever believe it. Furthermore, no writers, worthy of credit or unworthy, have recorded any such defection of the Britons from Roman rule by which they themselves established a king who held the whole island under his dominion — such as, even when they were independent and free, they never had. We have shown that war was stirred up against the Romans at various times, now by one, then by another or several with combined forces — yet it was always extinguished within a short time. That in those disturbances there existed such a king as Geoffrey of Monmouth fabricates as Lucius — and not only the most mendacious Geoffrey but also the Elutherius letter — only those blinded by excessive prejudice could believe. Well known is that saying of Tacitus on the state of the Britons in these times: "Seldom," he says, "do two or three states come together to repel a common danger; thus, while each fights separately, all are conquered" (Agricola, ch. 12). "But in the province itself," says Baronius, "there were always some unsubdued peoples" over whom Lucius could rule. But who, I ask, were those unsubdued peoples? Wretched barbarians, driven from their own homes, without king or law, inhabiting the groves and mountains and the most desolate corners of the island — over whom no historical authority teaches that any king held supreme power; nor would it teach so, even if Geoffrey were to come back to life. Add to this that this conjecture contradicts every tradition, whether of actual or of fictitious events; for it supposes that the rude and unsubdued barbarians received the faith before the provincial people — a fabrication against which all the monuments of antiquity protest, and all the historians who write that in the time of Lucius it was not some few wild and rustic men but the province itself that embraced the faith. Hence Sabellicus says that "Britain was the first of all provinces publicly to receive the name of Christ with ecclesiastical order." The Elutherius letter also protests, which presents Lucius as governing the whole kingdom of Britain by the council of the nobles. Since, therefore, these arguments are altogether weak, the cardinal proceeds in his replies to the objections. "Dio reports," he says, "that the Britons crossed that wall which stood between them and the Roman camps. By this it is plainly indicated that Britain was at that time so

248 The Rise and Progress of Idolatry. (Book 3.) divided at that time, that the Romans occupied that part which lay on this side of the wall, while the Britons freely possessed the other part beyond the wall, and frequently sallied forth past that wall to provoke the Romans to battle. Thus, therefore, nothing prevents Lucius from having been king of Britain; however much the Romans held part of the island, he could still have been king of that further part which the Britons freely possessed. But this is nothing — for first, the translator of Dio misled this most learned man; Dio did not write that the Britons crossed the wall, as the Latin version has it, but that certain nations of the island, most hostile to the Britons properly so called, crossed the wall. For he says: "For those living on the island had crossed the wall" — Book 72. And writers always distinguish those peoples from the Britons; though it cannot be doubted that many of the Britons, or the most ancient inhabitants of the island, lived their lives beyond the wall. In that part of the island, then, which lies beyond Hadrian's wall, the cardinal wants this Lucius to have reigned. But how many of our countrymen, I ask, know where that wall was built and laid? Anyone who knows this will believe that what is said of Lucius and the British kingdom fits some petty barbarian king beyond the wall, whoever he may be. Nor is it called into question whether some Lucius somewhere on earth was converted to faith in Christ, but whether such a king as presided over the British kingdom under God alone, whom Eleutherius the Roman bishop was to instruct in the administration of the kingdom, publicly embraced the Christian faith. To say nothing of the archflamens and flamens of Geoffrey, whom this fabrication, together with London, York, and the City of Legions (that is, Caerleon), casts outside Hadrian's wall. Who, I ask, ever heard that Fugatius and Damianus, passing over the Roman province that embraced nearly the whole of the present kingdom of England and Wales, went to the barbarians beyond the wall? That same thing overthrows this fable most thoroughly — namely, that it is most certain and well known that those barbarian peoples who held the parts of the island beyond the wall did not submit to the yoke of Christ until a long time afterward, and not until provincial Britain had publicly received the Christian faith for several centuries — which is sufficiently established from Gildas alone in his work on the destruction of Britain. In the third place, therefore, but incidentally, and as if he himself could scarcely put faith in it, the cardinal adds: "Furthermore, there could also have been some Lucius who was a petty king set over part of Britain under Roman dominion, and subject to Roman rule." Although this reply, in a word, is not at all comparable to what he had put forward before, yet it is most certain that all historical credibility and probability — indeed any color of truth — is lacking unless it be sought from this source. Let us therefore briefly examine whether even this can in any way be reconciled with what is said of Lucius, and what the Elutherius letter proclaims about him. First, then, there is the deepest silence about this petty king among the reliable historians who wrote about British affairs — Dio, Julius Capitolinus, and Lampridius; nor is anything said by them that implies such a petty king throughout the province wielding royal authority; rather, they describe the state and condition of those times in such a way as to indicate that none existed. Furthermore, the letter asserts that Lucius wrote to Eleutherius asking him to see to it that the Roman laws be sent to him — which, while those beyond the wall, as enemies of the Roman name, might do, yet none of the provincial inhabitants needed to send ambassadors to Rome to receive those laws which they saw expounded and administered by the greatest men throughout the whole province. Indeed, that the Britons had a thorough knowledge of Roman law long before these times is suggested by the poet: "Eloquent Gaul taught the Britons to plead cases."

Nor did those petty kings, whom the Romans tolerated anywhere as instruments of servitude, have such power over their subjects that the choice of which laws they used rested with them. It is indeed absurd that a petty king under Roman dominion, who, as the cardinal says, "obeyed Roman rule," should have sought imperial laws from a Roman bishop. But what does this have to do with Lucius of Eleutherius — to say nothing of Geoffrey's Lucius — who, as God's vicegerent and subject to Him alone, presided over the whole British kingdom and administered it by the council of his subjects? Furthermore, this spurious Eleutherius, whose letter nowhere breathes the spirit of those most ancient times, condemns and rejects the imperial laws as unfit for the civil administration of the kingdom — which the true Eleutherius would neither have done, nor would have dared to do. I myself would by no means deny that some Lucius, perhaps of royal blood and of the greatest authority even among the Britons, embraced the profession of the Christian religion around those times, and promoted the faith to the best of his ability. But that the fabulists transformed him into a supreme king — and, because it was well known that no one had succeeded him in the kingdom, used him as a convenient peg — and that the letter said to be from Eleutherius to him is fictitious, no one, I think, will deny, who turns his mind away from inveterate prejudices toward the knowledge and consideration of truth.