Native religion in Roman Britain: the evidence

What was the ‘native’ religion?

Aldhouse-Green provides us with perhaps the best definition of ‘native’ cults, deities and sanctuaries, as being those ‘that apparently had their genesis in the cosmological systems and paradigms of western Europe outside the Mediterranean littoral’ (2004, 193). An examination of the evidence shows that the nature of the Celtic/native religious beliefs in Britain during the time of the Romans can be broken down further into one of three types:

• truly ‘native’, i.e. originating in the British pre-Roman Iron Age, and continuing to be worshipped by the Romano-British populace
• ‘native’ but originating during the Roman occupation of Britain and worshiped by the populace
• brought into the province by non-British Celts, who could be either civilians, i.e. traders/merchants, or the military.

Celtic religion was expressed as a belief in ‘the spirits of nature. Sea and sky, mountains, rivers and trees…the sun, the source of heat and light, and the moon, the measure of time…’ (Birley 1964, 136). All were thought to be endowed with powerful spirits, as were certain animals and birds, seen as having impressive attributes, and all deserving of worship by prayer and sacrifice. Henig (1984) further emphasises this connection between natural features and the divine world and claims that place-name evidence suggests that rivers in particular received names long before the Celtic language was spoken, i.e. the Thames may have been so named in the Bronze Age or earlier (ibid. 17). Further examples of the worship of these personified natural features include Verbia, meaning ‘winding river’, attested on an altar at Ilkley, North Yorkshire (RIB 635). This connection with water - the veneration of rivers and watery places, especially bogs - is also attested in the numerous offerings of precious objects. The earth itself was also thought to be sacred. Shafts were sunk into the ground in the Bronze Age and became more frequent in the Iron Age and Roman periods. Evidence of sacrifices in these pits, along with the presence of great timbers, suggests a symbolic sexual penetration of the earth thus constituting fertility magic.

The cult of the head also formed part of the Celtic belief system. Human heads were seen as totems of power. A head could be severed from an enemy in battle and yet retain life independent of the body. The head in Celtic imagery is often shown stylised, with almond shaped eyes, long nose, and a slit mouth: whilst the head on divine images is often shown with horns or antlers, reflecting another belief – that of the Img38.htm.

Specific sites of native worship would have had their own individual rites and ceremonies, for the power of Celtic deities appears to have been very much tied to specific locations.

Interpretatio Romana

At Bath (Aquae Sulis) in Western England Roman engineers transformed a spring, possibly a focus of worship in the Iron Age, into a great ornamental pool, probably embellished with statues and enclosed in a grand building. Beside it they built a temple of Mediterranean type and a magnificent set of mineral baths lay next to the temple and spring. Sulis was equated with Minerva and the names were used together and interchangeably.

Coventina was another water-goddess . Her shrine outside the Roman fort of Carrawburgh was excavated in the nineteenth century. Her name is Celtic but she was not equated with one of the great deities of the Roman state. On inscriptions she is addressed as a nymph, and is portrayed as such on sculptures. She attracted dedication from soldiers of all ranks. Near to her shrine was a mithraeum, and also a small open-air shrine to the nymphs and the Genus Loci, and the dedicator there, a prefect, obviously saw the nymphs as separate from Coventina. It was common for groups of shrines to exist alongside each other, each with a separate deity having its own title and its own ceremonies. Extreme localisation, such as this, came about because people were anxious that the shrine of every divine power received its due. Indeed, anxiety appears to have invaded the sleep of ordinary people as an altar found beside a spring at Risingham records ‘Forewarned in a dream, the soldier bade her who is married to Fabius to set up this altar to the Nymphs who are to be worshiped’.

The ‘native’ deities

Seventy Celtic deities are known from Britain, and of these twenty-one are also known on the Continent (see table, and selected discussion below). Occasionally where the name of the sprit was not known, the dedication would be just to the ‘genius’ or spirit of the place.

Comparison study – the villa region of Western England and North-east England

In Western England a concentration of sculpture and inscriptions can be seen to correspond to the richer villa zone, while in North-east England, especially on the northern frontier, the native deities appear to have distinct distributions, possibly relating to the nature of the military presence. In both of these areas native deities predominate, overshadowing the official state religion, however, a definite distinction could be made between the military zones and the civilian, where in the latter the Roman and native gods appear to be ‘harmoniously intertwined’, while in the former ‘a sentina numinium, a kitchen-midden of all sorts of cults heaped up from all quarters of the Empire’, prevailed (Haverfield 1923, 73).

The villa region of Western England

An example of a wholly British deity is Nodens, or Nodons. His main sanctuary was at Lydney (Gloucestershire) on the river Severn, where he is mentioned either alone or equated with both Mars and Silvanus. He was essentially a hunting god, but was also associated with water and healing. His large temple complex was centred on a therapeutic spring, which also contained a number of buildings including a dormitory. There are no representations of him in human form and the finding of representations of dogs from the site may suggest that he either took that form or that he was attended by a dog (similar to the healer god Aesculapius). Finds of oculists’ stamps (collyrium or salve stamps) confirm his aspect of healing. His temple complex was not founded before the third-century AD and has been associated with a re-emergence of cult activity in the southwest dating to late third and fourth century.

Two native cults that appear in both regions but which are perhaps more common in Western England are those of the Deae Matres – one of the many forms of Mother-Goddesses, and the Genii cucullati – curious representations of three dwarves wearing the Gaulish hooded cloak. The Deae Matres are connected with fertility and are often depicted in triplicate as a group of female figures carved in simple stone relief, either nursing infants or with baskets in their laps containing loaves, fruit, or fish symbolising plenty. Single representations also occur – an example is known from Caerwent - while a group of four was discovered in London. Depictions can also be found on bronze and silver plaques. Their distribution includes Hadrian’s Wall, Lincolnshire and London, but there is a concentration in Western England, notably centred on Cirencester and Bath where they are known as the Suleviae – a name thought to be linked to Sulis – and are also possibly connected to water and healing springs. The Genii cucullati share an identical distribution to the Deae Matres, being especially common in Cirencester. Their relief carvings appear very crude and sometimes schematised and they are associated with prosperity, well-being and fertility. In Gloucestershire they are sometimes found accompanying the mother-goddesses, or shown carrying eggs, and like them are also connected with ceremonies associated with therapeutic springs, as evident at Springhead (Kent) and Bath.

North-east England

In the northern military zone, particularly along Hadrian’s Wall, the native gods overshadow the official Roman religion and all the other Graeco-Roman gods (Breeze & Dobson 2000, 281). There are dedications to native deities known throughout the province, but there are many who are specific to the military zone such as Antenociticus at Benwell and Coventina, mentioned above, at Carrwburgh, however, three deities in particular have prolific dedications.

Belatucadrus, of which there are no representations, was mainly worshipped towards the western end of Hadrian’s Wall, and at Brougham (Cumbria) in the military hinterland. Often he is equated with Mars and his dedications usually take the form of small altars set up by the lower ranks of soldier.

Cocidius also has a similar western distribution, and like Belatucadrus is often equated with Mars. It is believed that his shrine was situated at or near Bewcastle (Cumbria) – thought to be the Fanum Cocidi of the Ravenna Cosmography. Silver plaques from the headquarters building at Bewcastle depict a more schematised version of him, wearing full armour and holding a spear of native type. Where Cocidius differs is that he is worshipped by the military, often by men of superior social standing such as a legionary centurion and equestrian officers. He is also occasionally represented, in figure form, in rock-cut shrines.

The third unique local deity is a god (or gods) known as the Vetri or Hveteri, with a multitude of similar spellings, whose distribution is mainly the central and eastern parts of Hadrian’s Wall, with some sites having large numbers of dedications (16 at Carvoran, and 9 at Vindolanda). These also tend to be in the form of small altars, dedicated by the lower classes, although it has been suggested that the variation in spelling indicates that the deity’s name could not be expressed easily in the Latin alphabet (Birley 1979, 107).

The military zone occupied a large part of the area associated with the Brigantes and this territory appears to have had its own deity Brigantia: though the distribution of her dedicationsis incoherent, mainly occurring in two distinct regions; Hadrian’s Wall and to the north of it (i.e. Birrens); and also the area of the Calder basin. At Aldborough, the presumed tribal capital, there is no record of her. Her representation, from a statue found at Birrens, was described by Richmond as ‘… a remarkable personification, which combines in one figure the conception of a territorial goddess, with mural crown, a wargoddess clad like Minerva but with an auxiliary regiment’s style of helmet, a Victory with wings, and a featureless monolith representing Caelestis’ (1955, 190). On some dedications she is addressed as a water-goddess but not in the Birrens example.

Another aspect of the military zone is the occurrence of dedications to native gods by officers whilst hunting such as the dedications to Vinontonus, presumed to have been set up in a shrine to the god situated on moorland a few miles from the fort at Bowes, North Yorkshire.

Bibliography

Abbreviations

AE L’anee epigraphique

ANRW Aufsteig und Neidergang der Romischen Welt. Berlin and New York

CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum

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