The Druids

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2012

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Druids, the priests of ancient Europe. Active in Ireland, Britain and Gaul, the Druids were first written about by Roman authors including Julius Caesar and Pliny, who described them as wearing white robes and cutting mistletoe with golden sickles. They were suspected of leading resistance to the Romans, a fact which eventually led to their eradication from ancient Britain. In the early modern era, however, interest in the Druids revived, and later writers reinvented and romanticised their activities. Little is known for certain about their rituals and beliefs, but modern archaeological discoveries have shed new light on them.

With:

Barry Cunliffe Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford

Miranda Aldhouse-Green Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University

Justin Champion Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:44.0	Hello the earliest known case of religious persecution in these islands took place
0:48.8	two thousand years ago in the first century a.
0:51.6	The oppressors were the occupying forces of the Roman Empire,
0:54.8	and the victims were the Druids, an ancient religious order which was ruthlessly
0:59.4	eliminated from Roman Britain. The Druids were active in Britain, Ireland and Gaul and flourished for many centuries.
1:06.0	They were reasonably world chronicled by ancient authors including Julius Caesar and Posedonius.
1:12.0	Much later, thanks to a revival of interest in the 17th century, they inspired a wealth of literature and art.
1:17.0	But because the Druids were an oral culture and left no written records of their own comparatively little is known about their beliefs and practices.
	...

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