A GLOSSARY

A few useful notes:

Jesus was not born in England, he was born in Nazareth, which is not in the Cotswolds or equivalent. It rarely snows in Nazareth. This has led to a lot of confusion, particularly at primary school level.
The first Romans who came to England were not Christian. The next ones were. ‘Roman baths’ and ‘Roman soldiers’ came first, and then, hot on their heels, ‘Roman Catholics’.
The word catholic means ‘embracing of a wide variety of things’. So in the Protestant Apostolic Creed, the Protestant Church described itself as ‘catholic’. Another confusing thing. Look out for capital letters. When there is a capital C, it means the Catholic Church. Like Conservative and conservative.
BC means Before Christ and AD means Anno Domini, in the year of our lord. BCE means before Christian Era and CE means Christian Era. As in, ‘can we stop saying in the year of our lord cos it’s not our lord please’. Using BCE is a bit more inclusive, a bit more catholic, if you like. So BCE/CE is either woke or catholic, depending on your perspective.

Good. Off we go.

Druids

The oldest detailed written down description of British Druidic life comes from Julius Caesar’s book ‘the Gallic war’. After this, we also hear from Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Lucan & Cicero. Lucan made out that the Druids were extremely spooky and called their rites ‘hateful’. This is a classic case of history being written by the victors. Which is not to say that everything the Romans wrote is untrue.
NOTE: If you are British, it’s very hard to know whether your ancestors were druidic britons or invading romans or a mixture. I certainly have no idea. All that has been lost to the annals of time.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe was used by the ancient Romans, to protect thresholds. It is a very unusual plant. Mistletoe was the most sacred branch for the Druids, which is a funny coincidence. Pliny the Elder (circa 77CE) tells us that British Druids worshipped the Mistletoe and the Oak wearing white cloaks, and that they sacrificed white bulls, just like in Cretan tradition which is also a funny coincidence. In the study of history, a funny coincidence might suggest shared human curiosities across the world, or it might signal absolute nonsense. It’s true that mistletoe is simply a very unusual plant, in that it grows mid-air.

The Great Snuffing

Over the first couple of centuries of the Romans in Britain, Druids were snuffed. The Romans integrated aspects of some pagan Celtic beliefs but they tended to snuff the Druids, because they were worried they were too political. Also, of course, the writers of the time tell us how the Druids engaged in human sacrifice, which the Romans considered particularly barbaric. On the rocky road to British Christianity, it was the Druids who were pushed into the ditches.
NOTE: It is of course possible that the Druids had snuffed out other religions earlier on. It’s hard to say 100%.

Nineteenth Century Revival

In the nineteenth century, there was a revival of interest in Druidic customs, particularly things like how these ancient priests used to gather mistletoe from the sacred oak. These ancient British rites became a popular subject for art.

Rome

The confusing thing about “Rome'“ is that it is both the Romans who were absolutely not Christian, who martyred Christians and fed them to animals for entertainment - and the later Romans who were extremely Christian. The Romans, from a religious historical perspective, had their cake and ate it.

But when the Romans first arrived in Britain, they did not come with the Cross. They came with Mars, with Jupite and with Minerva. They were smart, so they integrated some Celtic gods. This is known as Synthecism. Sulis Minerva is a good example of a synthecised god. The Druidic people were not so into synthecism so they were suppressed and sometimes massacred. The Druids disappear from written record in the 2nd Century.

During these early years of Roman rule, other religions from the Empire also appeared, such as Mithraism, the cult of Isis, and a tiny bit of Christianity. This middle-eastern religion started as a sect, but became more popular in Rome, and, by reasons of Empire, also in Britain.

By 380 CE, Rome decided to become Christian. What a turnaround. And so, Nicene Christianity became the official religion of Empire. But this was just the time that Roman rule in Britain started to crumble. And a few decades later, they withdrew taking their red wine and their funny Christian ways and Britons gradually turned back to the religions of their ancestors.

The Anglo Saxons Arrive

Almost as soon as the dust had settled from the hasty withdrawal of the Romans, the Anglo-Saxons (and the Jutes) arrived from Germany (and Denmark). Many had come as mercenaries with the Roman army and had, apparently, seen what a lovely little island Britain was, and so they went home, told all their Anglo, Saxon (and Jute) friends about it and came back.

An Anglo-Saxon language and culture soon overtook the remnants of Latin and Celtic culture and language, including the burgeoning Roman Christianity. Although there was still a bit of Christianity left in Wales, of all places. Anglo-Saxon Gods are most famous for having favourite days of the week: Tiw, Woden, Thor, Frige. (Frige is the Norse Goddess of Prophecy and not, as computer programmers would have you believe, a misspelling of the word ‘fridge’.).

St Augustine Arrives

The Romans, meanwhile, were becoming really really Christian. Which is strange when you come to think about it, given Jesus Christ famously suffered under Pontius Pilate.

Anyway, the Romans didn’t worry themselves too much about that. For with their new-found Christianity, they were forging a new kind of Empire. And they still had dreams of conquering that pesky little island that had prooved to be so rainy and troublesome to them in the past. In the year 597, they were ready.

Pope Gregory the Great is mostly known for his contribution to music, in the form of the ‘Gregorian’ chant, but he is also known for establishing Christianity in Britain. This time, for good. He send Augustian (a prior of a Roman monastery) to England, to speak with an English Pagan King whose name was Æthelberht, King of Wessex. Æthelberht’s wife, Bertha, was Christian, so Gregory thought that he was a good bet for conversion. Augustine landed in Thanet, off the coast of Kent, with some other Christian friends, and he sent a message to Æthelberht to ask if they could meet. Æthelberht said yes, as long as it was outside (he was nervous that Augustine might do some sorcery upon him). Anyway, they met, and Bertha came along, and the long and the short of it is that Æthelberht converted and he made Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

The Christianity left over by the Romans in the West, in and around Wales, was not the same type as Augustine Christianity. There was a bit of friction, as is often the way between peaceful religions. Nevertheless, Christianity stumbled forward and over the course of the 7th Century, it grew and grew. With baptisms. And baths. (Gregory also encouraged the British to bathe more, which I can’t help but think is a bit mean, because it’s one thing bathing in Meditteranean conditions, and quite another thing bathing in the rain, anyway).

The last pagan king within Britain was Arwald of the Wihtwara people on the Isle of Wight. He was killed in 686 AD when Wessex, led by King Cædwalla, invaded the island and that was that. No more pagan kings.

The Normans

When the Normans invaded in 1066, they reinforced Christianity. They were French, and so just that bit more Christian than the British. Something you can still spot to this day. Anyway, they built lots of amazing churches and the truth is that Christianity really seems like its here to stay.

Jewish Arrivals

Along with a few more Norman people, William the Conqueror invited Jewish financiers from Rouen to come and help establish the new kingdom. So it was that communities grew up, in cities including London, Norwich, York, Bristol and Oxford. They lived under protection of the crown and things seem to have been generally harmonius, until