The Pagan Religions Of The Ancient British Isles

This is the first survey of religious beliefs in the British Isles from the Old Stone Age to the coming of Christianity, one of the least familiar periods in Britain's history. Ronald Hutton draws upon a wealth of new data, much of it archaeological, that has transformed interpretation over the past decade. Giving more or less equal weight to all periods, from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, he examines a fascinating range of evidence for Celtic and Romano-British paganism, from burial sites, cairns, megaliths and causeways, to carvings, figurines, jewellery, weapons, votive objects, literary texts and folklore.

Britain's pagan past, with its mysterious monuments, atmospheric sites, enigmatic artifacts, bloodthirsty legends, and cryptic inscriptions, is both enthralling and perplexing to a resident of the twenty-first century. In this ambitious and thoroughly up-to-date book, Ronald Hutton reveals the long development, rapid suppression, and enduring cultural significance of paganism, from the Paleolithic Era to the coming of Christianity. He draws on an array of recently discovered evidence and shows how new findings have radically transformed understandings of belief and ritual in Britain before the arrival of organized religion. Setting forth a chronological narrative, Hutton along the way makes side visits to explore specific locations of ancient pagan activity. He includes the well-known sacred sites—Stonehenge, Avebury, Seahenge, Maiden Castle, Anglesey—as well as more obscure locations across the mainland and coastal islands. In tireless pursuit of the elusive “why” of pagan behavior, Hutton astonishes with the breadth of his understanding of Britain’s deep past and inspires with the originality of his insights.

Traces the history & development of Celtic Paganism & Christianity specifically in Wales, but also in relation to the rest of the British Isles including Ireland, from the Iron Age to the present. A study of the transition between the pagan religions & Christianity & how the early Church, in the Celtic countries struggled with & later absorbed the earlier forms of spirituality, clearly seen in the development of Celtic Christianity when pagan & Christian beliefs co-existed, albeit in an uneasy & sometimes violent relationship. Also covers how the Roman Catholic version of Christianity arrived in England at the end of the 6th century & its affect on the Celtic Church; how Celtic Christianity was suppressed & the effect this was to have on the history & theology of the Church in the Middle Ages. The influence of Celtic Christianity on the Arthurian legends & the Grail romances is explored, as is the resurgence of interest in Celtic Christianity today.

In Christians and Pagans in Roman Britain, first published in 1991, Professor Dorothy Watts sets out to distinguish possible Pagan features in Romano-British Christianity in the period leading up to and immediately following the withdrawal of Roman forces in AD 410. Watts argues that British Christianity at the time contained many Pagan influences, suggesting that the former, although it had been present in the British Isles for some two centuries, was not nearly as firmly established as in other parts of the Empire. Building on recent developments in the archaeology of Roman Britain, and utilising a nuanced method for deciphering the significance of objects with ambiguous religious identities, Christians and Pagans in Roman Britain will be of interest to classicists, students of the history of the British Isles, Church historians, and also to those generally interested in the place of Christianity during the twilight of the Western Roman Empire.

"An A-Z of the pagan gods & goddesses worshipped in ancient Britain during the first millennium CE through to the Middle Ages"--Cover.

Twilight of the Celtic Gods is a fascinating account of Britain's surviving Celtic tradition. This ground-breaking book - based on the authors' combined research in the field - reveals for the first time clear evidence that many ancient traditions and customs are still kept alive today in the heart of twentieth-century Britain. Combining first-hand accounts with folklore, mythology and archeology, David Clarke and Andy Roberts have uncovered the last traces of a Celtic legacy which is in imminent danger of extinction. Their quest combines beliefs about the natural and supernatural worlds with the awesome forces locked in the landscape and in the mind. Illustrated throughout with colour and black and white photographs, line drawings and maps, this book is an important collection of the last remnants of our ancient past.

The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. The ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer's belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths. In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles' unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. The authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. The resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote "The Wife of Bath's Tale" in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology. Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources,Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology.