About 400 BC Celtic tribes crossed the Swiss Alps into northern Italy. After capturing the fertile Po Valley region, they laid siege to Rome (see Roman Empire). At the same time other groups of Celts pushed down into France and Spain, eastward to Asia Minor, and westward to the British Isles. To what is now France they gave the ancient name of Gaul.
In Asia Minor they founded the kingdom of Galatia. St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians in the New Testament is addressed to the descendants of these Celts. In Britain, Celtic warriors overran and conquered the islands.
Celtic Life and Religion
The Celts were organized loosely in tribes. Each tribe had a chief, nobles, freemen, and slaves. Usually it lived in a fortified village, often built on a hilltop, with fields and pastures outside. The tribes often fought each other. If one tribe conquered several others, its chief took the title of king.
The Celts brought many new skills to the peoples they conquered. They knew how to smelt iron and forge it into useful implements. They decorated their helmets, shields, and arms with artistic metalwork and enameling. The Celts were also adept in such practical matters as curing hams, keeping bees, and making wooden barrels.
Celtic priests were called druids, and their religion, druidism. Little is known of the druids because their rites were never written down. Apparently their gods were similar to those of other early peoples. The druids of Gaul were both judges and priests who sacrificed criminals to their gods. The druids of Britain were chiefly religious teachers.
Only men of a good family could become druids. Membership was highly prized because druids did not have to fight or pay taxes. The druids taught that the soul was immortal, passing after death from one person to another. They deemed the mistletoe sacred, especially if grown on an oak tree. The oak was also sacred, and druids often held their rites in an oak forest. Wise in the lore of plants, animals, and stars, the druids were also magicians and astrologers. Many ancient stone monuments were once thought to have been built by druids, but scientists now date them from pre-Celtic times.
Celtic Decline
The Celtic domination of Western Europe lasted only a few centuries. In time the Romans made Italy, Gaul, and much of Britain into Roman provinces. The Carthaginians overpowered the Celts in Spain, and German tribes drove the Celts out of the Rhine Valley. Following the Roman conquest, the Anglo-Saxon invasion wiped out most traces of Celtic culture in England. Only on the fringe of Europe did the Celts manage to keep their distinctive traits and languages in Brittany, the Isle of Man, Wales, Ireland, and the Scottish Highlands. There traces of Celtic culture still survive in folklore and in the Breton, Manx, Welsh, Erse, and Gaelic languages.
The name Celtic Renaissance was given to a revival of interest in Celtic languages, literatures, and history, which began in the late 1800s. The revival was especially strong in Ireland, where it led to the writing of plays with Irish-Celtic themes. Erse, or Irish Gaelic, is now an official language of Ireland.
