Dr***s and R****s

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jimit J
jimit Jan 13, 2009 17:01:57

I know that this period is at the extreme limit of the remit of this site but bear with me.......

I've been reading Julius Caesar's "The Gallic Wars" where he talks about the Gallic Druids. Usual stuff about human sacrifices and "Wicker Man " practices etc. but this sentence caught my eye......

"On a fixed date in each year they hold a session in a consecrated spot in the country of the Carnutes, which is supposed to be the centre of Gaul".

.....this seemed to be a place for judgements and awards and people came from far and wide to attend.
[The Carnutes occupied an area SW of Paris around present day Chartres and Orleans]

As any fule kno, the Druids didn't worship in stone temples but one would love to find out where this place was, what date in the year they celebrated and if, and it's a very big if, the place was, as it were, pre-consecrated by a previous Neolithic structure.

Do any of our continental contributers have any knowledge of the sites/folklore of this place?

Jim.

B bawn79
bawn79 Jan 13, 2009 18:13:03
Replying to jimit

I dont but that is an interesting quote alright.

However say in Ireland where the early Christain church built on sites that were supposed to be linked to whatever the earlier religion was, would this not mean that some of these megalithic sites that were reused would have also been used by Druids (if that was the religion between whatever the Neolithic/Bronze Age people and the early Christain people) and therefore the Druids did worship at fixed stone sites?

F fitzcoraldo
fitzcoraldo Jan 13, 2009 20:10:55
Replying to jimit

jimit wrote:
I know that this period is at the extreme limit of the remit of this site but bear with me.......

I've been reading Julius Caesar's "The Gallic Wars" where he talks about the Gallic Druids. Usual stuff about human sacrifices and "Wicker Man " practices etc. but this sentence caught my eye......

"On a fixed date in each year they hold a session in a consecrated spot in the country of the Carnutes, which is supposed to be the centre of Gaul".

.....this seemed to be a place for judgements and awards and people came from far and wide to attend.
[The Carnutes occupied an area SW of Paris around present day Chartres and Orleans]

As any fule kno, the Druids didn't worship in stone temples but one would love to find out where this place was, what date in the year they celebrated and if, and it's a very big if, the place was, as it were, pre-consecrated by a previous Neolithic structure.

Do any of our continental contributers have any knowledge of the sites/folklore of this place?

Jim.

Hi Jim
you have to be careful with Caesar. History is written by the victors and all that. Piggot seemed to think that Carnutes was possibly Caesar giving the impression that the Gauls were a lot more organised than they actually were, thus making his conquest seem all the mightier.
Piggot quotes Thucydides on Caesar, "a master of rearrangement, emphasis, omission, skilfully directed to his own political aim".

As for the druids not worshipping in stone temples, there were definitely French Celtic 'cult' centres that had stone elements e.g. Roquepertuse and Entremont although I'm not sure whether these were temples of an earlier period that had been re-used.

cheers
fitz

M moss
moss Jan 14, 2009 08:10:40
Replying to jimit

jimit wrote:
I know that this period is at the extreme limit of the remit of this site but bear with me.......

I've been reading Julius Caesar's "The Gallic Wars" where he talks about the Gallic Druids. Usual stuff about human sacrifices and "Wicker Man " practices etc. but this sentence caught my eye......

"On a fixed date in each year they hold a session in a consecrated spot in the country of the Carnutes, which is supposed to be the centre of Gaul".

.....this seemed to be a place for judgements and awards and people came from far and wide to attend.
[The Carnutes occupied an area SW of Paris around present day Chartres and Orleans]

As any fule kno, the Druids didn't worship in stone temples but one would love to find out where this place was, what date in the year they celebrated and if, and it's a very big if, the place was, as it were, pre-consecrated by a previous Neolithic structure.

Do any of our continental contributers have any knowledge of the sites/folklore of this place?

Jim.

Just as an aside, the Uley roman temple site in Gloucester, might be a possible canditate stretching back to the neolithic, it may have been built on a longbarrow, then Iron age shrine, through to roman and christian.
Chartres (Carnute) cathedral I think also sits on some roman walling which was probably a temple.

http://curses.csad.ox.ac.uk/sites/uley-history.shtml