Rodney Castleden - The Element Encyclopedia of the Celts

After Cunobelinus’s death, his two sons, Togodumnusand Caratacus, expanded Catuvellaunian power even more aggressively than their father. They seemed to be fearless of the Romans hesitating to invade on the other side of the Channel.

Romano-Celtic curses inscribed informally on sheets of lead are known by the Latin name defixiones , because of the form of words often used: somebody’s name followed by defictus est (“is cursed.”) They were deposited with other offerings in shrines. In effect the curse was offered up to the gods just like any other prayer.

In 1930 only four curse tablets were known, but subsequent excavations, at places such as Bath, and Uley in Gloucestershire, have revealed many more of them. They are difficult to read because they have been hastily scratched.

Curse tablets are of interest in their intensely personal character. A fine example was found at the Romano-Celtic sanctuary at Uley. It was written on both sides of a rectangular lead sheet 3.5 inches (9cm) across and then rolled up tightly, presumably so that no one except the godwould be able to read it. When it was found, it had to be unrolled very carefully under laboratory conditions, to make sure that it did not break up. The conservation was successful, and this is how the inscription runs:

A reminder to the God Mercury from Saturnina, a woman, concerning the linen cloth she has lost. Let him who has stolen it have no rest until he brings the aforesaid things to the aforesaid temple, whether this is a man or a woman, slave or free. She gives a third part to the aforesaid god on condition that he exacts those things which have been written above. A third part of what has been lost is given to the god Silvanus on condition that he exact this whether [the culprit?] is a man or woman, slave or free.

This curse was left at the shrine, where a fine stone statue of Mercurypresided; its headhas survived. Where Saturnina wrote the name of the god Mercury, the name of another god, Mars- Silvanus, has been erased. The later reference to Silvanus confirms that the woman was depositing her curse with two gods, not just one, as an insurance. It also looks as if she had left a curse with Mercury before: this is “a reminder.” Whether Saturnina ever got her linen back we shall never know.

Some tablets sound more legalistic. One from Bath reads: “I have given the goddess Sulis six silver pieces which I have lost. It is for the goddess to extract it from the debtors Senicianus, Saturninus, and Anniola. This document has been copied.”

Some are difficult to translate because they have been written informally and ungrammatically, apparently in a rage. One of these, again from Bath, reads: “I curse whoever has stolen, whoever has robbed Deomorix from his house. Whoever is guilty may the god find him. Let him recover it with his blood and his life.” Deomorix was a Celt.

A tablet from Moorgate in London was written in a towering rage: “I curse Tretia Maria and her life and mind and memory and liver and lungs all mixed up together, her words, thoughts and memory, thus may she be unable to speak of things concealed…”

One from Harlow, addressed to Mercury, is not about theft—which most are—but about a love triangle: “I entrust to you my affair with Eterna and her own self, and may Timotneus feel no jealousy of me at risk of his life blood.”

See Ewein Whitetooth .

David or Dewi of Menevia (St. David’s) was probably born in 523. He died in 589. He was the son of “Sanctus,” King of Cardigan, and Nonnita, daughter of Cynyr, “in the time of King Triphunus and his sons.” He was baptized by Ailbe and educated at Vetus Rubus (Henllwyn) under Illtud. After a time he established Vallis Rosina (Hodnant, now called Merry Vale). David was harassed by an Irish chief called Boya, who paraded naked women in front of his monks in order to tempt them. He established an austere monastic rule, living on vegetables and water, which earned him the nickname David Aquaticus. Gildasdenounced his extremism.

At the Synod of Brefi, in about 545, called to discuss Pelagianism, David addressed the assembly and his oratory persuaded them, much to the anger of Cadoc, who was then overseas. But this synod was a decisive victory for David. New monastic houses were founded all over the country and David was informally acclaimed archbishop or even “head” of all Britain.

One notable disciple was Aedan of Ferns, and through him up to one third of Ireland followed David’s rule. David’s name recurs frequently in the Lives of Irish Saints .

The cult of David spread widely in Demetia (Pembrokeshire), Brecon, and the Wye Valley. It was more scattered in Cornwall and Brittany, was never established in Glamorgan, where Cadoc and Illtud held sway, and was absent from Scotland.

A British tribeliving in North Wales, in what is now Clwyd.

See Boudicca .

See David .

See Columba of Iona , Ruadan.

An Irish abbot who set up a small monastic house at Bosham, in Sussex, in around 650. He had with him five or six monks and they apparently had no effect at all on the local (pagan Saxon) population. St. Wilfrid found them there when he arrived in 680.

A Greek historian who lived in the first century BC. He was born in Sicily and later lived in Rome, where he collected the materials for his huge history of the world in 40 books. Some of our most reliable information about the state of Europe in the late Iron Age, not least about the Celts, comes from Diodorus.

A Druidof whom Julius Caesarhad personal knowledge. As well as being a Druid, Diviciacus was chief of the Aedui tribeand brother of Dumnorix. He went on a diplomatic mission to Rome, where he got to know Cicero, who described how Diviciacus would predict the future by augury. Cicero referred to him as a Druid.

Diviciacus helped Caesar enormously in his conquest of Gaul by persuading some of the tribes to collaborate with Rome. Caesar depended on him to form alliances that enabled him to conquer Gaul more smoothly and rapidly.

Caesar must have known that Diviciacus was a Druid, yet he does not mention it. But he did remember him as “the greatest man in Gaul”—a leader who had held sway among Gallic tribes and was also influential in Britain.

Also known as Kyngar of Congresbury, Docco was the son of Luciria and the emperor Constatinus III. He was born in 400–10. He was a cleric who traveled from Italy to found several major early monastic houses in Britain, including Congresbury in Somerset. The site was on the estate of a Roman villa, though the villa itself had by then gone.

Docco also crossed the Severn Sea to Glamorgan to found a monastery in the territory of Paulentus Penychen and visited Ireland, Aran, Rome, and Jerusalem. His monastery at St. Kew is the earliest known Cornish monastery—it was already well-established when St. Samsonvisited it in 540.