S01 Ep.2 - Paganism in Roman Britain, Ronald Hutton

Are you surprised that that's the case? No. Are you expecting to find more? No, it's the natural thing that would happen. when illiterate tribal peoples take over what for the time was quite a highly developed civilization. There's a complete implosion. Hello and welcome to a brand new podcast from Gresham College.

My name is Richard Tavener and I'm your host of Any Further Questions. This is a podcast where we invite one of our speakers on to go a little bit further on one of their recent talks. Today I'm joined by our current professor of divinity, Ronald Hutton. Ronald, welcome. How are you?

Thank you. It's lovely to be here. Lovely to see you. Appointed in 2022, he is number 34 of a long distinguished list of academics. He is also Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He's appeared in and presented numerous television and radio programmes and sits on the editorial... of six journals concerned with the history of religion and magic. The title of his first series of six talks for Gresham is Finding Britain's Lost Gods. Can I start?

Ronald, by asking you to explain in your own words what your Gresham series is about and why you chose it. It's about the pre-Christian religions of Britain, as far as we can understand them. and their impact upon the imagination and culture in later societies i start in the first series by getting the basics in looking at what we know about ancient pagan religions in britain In the second series I look at some of the wilder shores of European pagan belief like dodgy goddesses.

and ritual nudity and ceremonial magic. And then finally in the third series, I look at the reappearance of paganism in modern Britain.

how it did so, why it did so, and what forms it takes. Would I be right in saying that we are looking at the beginnings of paganism? I remember you mentioned in your talk that... Before this period of history, pre-history, ancient history, there isn't much evidence for paganism and for what they believed in and what the people believed in. Is that correct? There's very little certainty.

There's a lot of evidence, but the evidence can be viewed in all sorts of different ways. To me, that's a great strength because it enables people to dream their own dreams, see their own visions in the past with equal legitimacy. And theoretically, there could be about as many different constructions of ancient British paganism as there are people making the constructions. That's a huge dividend for poetry.

novels art and people's modern spirituality having said that there are some aspects of ancient paganism that makes it particularly user friendly for a modern spirituality. One is feminism that you have goddesses as well as gods, priestesses as well as or instead of priests. Second is environmentalism. that ancient paganism viewed nature as something inherently spiritualized and with which human beings were inherently bound up.

and that strikes a very resonant chord with present attitudes to ecology and finally personal ethics that ancient pagans didn't believe that the deities they worshipped had created them or gave them commandments or laws and then supervised them for what they did they therefore embodied an ethic of responsible personal growth of people being welcome to excel as much as they could at what they thought they had to give to the world while being responsible about it.

not doing harm to others in the process. So today we're focusing on a talk you gave back in December for Gresham called Paganism in Roman Britain. It was your second. talk of your series. And in it, you posed the questions, what was religion like in Roman Britain? What pre-Roman deities persisted? And what new gods came with the Romans? Can I ask what inspired you to write a talk on this topic?

were trying to convey to the audience? Well there's a mundane answer and a more full-bodied from the heart answer. The full-bodied one would be good. Well the mundane answer matters because I needed to cover historic paganism in Britain. and Romano-British paganism is a major component of that. I simply couldn't leave it out. But I really enjoyed doing it because the evidence is relatively good. There's still a lot we don't know about the experience.

but we have real literate individual people who leave us their personal testimonies about what they wanted from goddesses and gods. And you can reconstruct some really quite moving human stories from these documents. And that really does get to me. Roman Britain, I'll just remind the listeners what era we're talking about. It's a sort of roughly a 400 year period between AD 43 and AD 410.

You started the lecture with a sort of statement saying, we have no idea what religion was like before the Romans, but when the Romans arrived, they honoured the gods and the... the beliefs that the people had of the land and there was a sort of respect and mutual respect there. Could you expand on that?

The Romans believed that if they took over an area, they took over its goddesses and gods with it, and therefore it was a very good idea if they wanted to stick around, and they always did, to honour those goddesses and gods.

would accept the romans as new rulers and as settlers it all made perfect sense it's like ingratiating yourself with the local people so they don't cause trouble there are occasional exceptions it does seem as if the natives called upon particular war deities against the romans that the romans would abolish the cult of deities who had actually made war against them

we don't have a lot of evidence for this but there are goddesses and gods who are named as being set on the romans in the romans account who are never heard of again after the romans take over so we can infer this But the Romans wanted to co-opt as many local divinities as possible into supporting them, accepting them, and making the locals feel as though the Romans were both there to stay and benign new friends.

You mentioned that the Romans came and wanted to cast out the gods that sort of... suggested war it was just it reminded me of a civilizing um the people was that was that the case did they because you mentioned in the lecture as well about human sacrifice and um

they tried to change that, they tried to get rid of it. Did human sacrifice continue after the Romans conquered and were they successful in doing that? This is a really complicated and difficult subject because the only evidence that we have that seems absolute...

clear for Roman for human sacrifice among the peoples the Romans conquered is the Romans accusations against those people that they committed human sacrifice and it was a very common accusation used by the Romans against peoples they didn't like. In some cases, we can be absolutely certain it was wrong. For example, they accused early Christians and the Jews within their own empire of committing human sacrifice in secret. Now, we know a lot about early Christians. and Judaism.

absolutely sure that they didn't commit human sacrifice but the Romans were certain they did. Now we discount the accusations against Christians and Jews because we have good evidence for them and also they're around today. They have descendants who have a very strong vested interest in keeping the record plain. People like the Druids in Northern Europe.

don't or didn't and as a result there's been far more of a tendency to believe what the Romans said while failing to notice that this was a general smear. tactic used by the romans so the simple answer is we don't know yeah that that i'd imagine that's an answer to a lot of questions um asked about this this time period the gods of the northwest

parts of the empire were particularly abundant, you mentioned in the lecture. Were there any areas of the Roman Empire that had a particular abundance of deities or was it evenly spread?

Any areas of the empire that we are lacking in evidence for deities? No areas lack evidence. They're all over the place. And they're pretty evenly spread. And from Syria all the way to what's now Scotland, it's the same kind of... religion basically lots of different goddesses and gods most of whom are purely local and no sense of divinities who give laws and morals to humans. just a sense of these immensely powerful human-like spirits who can be called on in need and who if they

divinely run the area need to have regular respect paid to them by the people in charge of the community though not necessarily people in general. How are the new deities being discovered? The great thing about a rampant polytheism, lots of goddesses and gods, is

Not only is the list of them potentially endless, but new goddesses and gods can keep appearing. And they appear because people want them to appear, because they appear to them in dreams or visions, or in other cases because people... think a certain type of new cult would do them and others good and if you want to launch a new religion if you want it to be public you go to the senate in rome the

presiding body of the city of Rome in the west and you go to a major oracle that's a prophetess or prophet retained at a big temple in the east and they tell you if it's okay basically it's pretty well always okay, providing the new religion keeps the law and looks decently behaved and doesn't keep the neighbours awake and doesn't violate most people's sense of moral behaviour.

If you want to have a new cult in private, you don't even have to ask for permission. Just don't keep the neighbours awake. You mentioned people looking on the gods as the all-powerful being. I was thinking about Christianity and the belief in one God and the belief that that God created them. You touched upon this in the lecture, but I don't think you actually answered it. And I wondered, who did they think created them? Different ancient peoples had different creation myths.

And it looks as if, on the whole, a creation myth is a Near Eastern thing. In other words, it's something which appealed to the peoples of what's now Iraq, Syria, Egypt.

and they got into europe from there but every culture had a different creation myth to account for how deities and humans come to be but only in the near east is there the idea that deities created humans to serve them and the relationship there is very different from that in europe the terms used for deities in the ancient near east and middle east are the terms you use for a despotic king. You talk about the Lord God or God Almighty or the King of Kings.

Europeans don't do that. The kind of language in which Greeks and Romans, and apparently those further north, address their deities is that you use on meeting a lady or a gentleman. In other words, respectful but not grovelling. And the ideal relationship is not service so much as a friendship of having a divine buddy who has got to like you and will look after you if you really need. So it was more...

It was clearer in the Middle East. If we look at Britain specifically, where did they think that they came from and who did they think created them? We just don't know about the British because they didn't leave such a record. And the Romans didn't bother to think about this too much either. It was the Greeks who came up with all measure of different ideas. What they tend to lack is the idea... that human beings were created by deities or a deity.

to serve them and to fulfill their divine plan. Usually the appearance of humans is some kind of almost accidental knock-on effect from the general creation of the cosmos. One of my favorites is the story told by the Orphic mystery religion. those people who were initiated into the mystery rites of Orpheus, the divine musician. According to this, the original gods had a big war in heaven.

with superhuman beings called the Titans who almost beat them but they succeeded in defeating them and they did so because of a doomsday weapon that is the thunderbolts used by the chief god Zeus the god of storm and weather among other things and so the titans got nuked they got fried and their ashes fell to the ground and lay on the mud Rain came along heavily.

and washed the ashes into the mud and there were still some sparks of divine life left in the ashes of the destroyed titans and they mixed with the mud and to create flesh and the human race arose from this impregnated mud. Now, in this story, basically, the Titans are star demons.

they're from the heavens and as a result humans are pretty well completely screwed up we're mortal and we have woundable and decayable flesh and yet we're not really belonging to the earth we can never really find a harmonious place in it we're always longing for the stars due to the fact of how we were created yes that's right which is a cosmic accident yeah

So each creation story is based around the same general principles. The story is slightly different depending on the religion and depending on the culture. I would say, around it. Well, depending on the particular section of the religion or cult of a particular deity in the religion. Yeah. But each one is different. Yeah. And presupposes different things of the universe and of humanity.

You mentioned mystery religions of the Roman Empire. Could you expand on that? Mystery religions really boomed under the Roman Empire for two reasons. The first is that increasingly people were moving around the empire. And so the old rooted goddesses and gods belonging to a particular place didn't seem so user-friendly. But also it seems that there's always a genetically engineered minority of the human race who just have a religious instinct.

who feel that the divine is there and want to communicate with it. And these two needs came together in the mystery religion, which is a form of religion consisting of a closed, private society.

an international society of believers who are devoted to a particular deity or a particular divine couple and they're initiated they go up through grades of initiation learning more as they go and the idea is to make an intense and lasting personal relationship with this particular deity or pair of them that will last beyond death

and get you some kind of better afterlife. So there are lots of benefits. There's the benefit for those who have this kind of instinct of an intense permanent personal relationship with a divinity.

and there's the freemason payoff that of belonging to a multi-ethnic supranational society everywhere in the roman empire so if you arrive in a strange town you look up the lodge the the temple of the local branch of your mystery religion and you've got friends there and a local network and a social life So the benefits are tremendous, but you do need to have a religious temperament to feel comfortable in a mystery religion, and most people didn't need them and wouldn't have felt comfortable.

It gave you an extended family, as it were. So it gave you, as you mentioned, that network across when you were traveling. You describe it and it sounds sinister. Was it always sinister or were there...

positive aspects. I didn't mean to sound sinister at all. Okay. I think it's very positive if you're religious by temperament to want an intense personal relationship with the deity. I think what I meant by that is when you see it... visualized on television or in films you see cloaked sometimes see cloaked people all standing in a circle with um lit by fire and doing various uh

things to people's bodies and what's so. This is simply the Judeo-Christian view of paganism. It's the abomination of the heathen, which makes really good thriller cinema and TV for those who like that kind of thing. It lends itself to both the horror genre and the thriller genre and their very powerful genres.

The mystery religions, as far as all the evidence goes, died out at the end of the Roman Empire when it shattered into bits. Okay. And when it got converted... slowly but thoroughly to Christianity. Christianity took on an immense number of ideas, rituals, motifs, decorations, stories. art images from paganism, but it incorporated

A lot of them pretty thoroughly. Some of them it had more trouble with. They became like ritual magic, became the preserve of enthusiasts in private who were always disreputable. but on the whole ancient paganism was assimilated just getting rid of the belief system and putting in a different kind of religion so instead of having mystery religions what christianity produced were religious guilds

and confraternities, sororities. And these are the same kind of thing under a Christian umbrella. So they're dedicated to particular saints, not particular goddesses and gods. But there are still hundreds of saints. In fact, the number keeps growing, and about half of them are female. And all age groups, both sexes, all nationalities can find a place in a Christian guild or confraternity.

Could you talk a bit more about Mithras? You mentioned Mithras in your lecture. Mithras is the best known of all the imperial Roman mystery religions. The religion seems to get started in Rome itself, but it claims to be the cult of a Persian god of light triumphing over darkness and death. it's clearly immensely exciting and charismatic initially and mostly it's limited to men so it's really popular among soldiers and travelling male merchants. Women seem to have got to join towards the end.

the Roman Empire and you're initiated through around nine grades with different presumably a different initiation ceremony and different aspects and characteristics for each grade as you go up until you reach the highest grade which is father which presumably means you run the lodge you run the temple the worship spaces for Mithras's cult are much more standardized than others. They consist of a rectangular building.

with seating down both sides a bit like a modern railway carriage in shape, size and with the seating except the seats face inwards and there's a shrine area at the end.

with a standard relief of the young glowing god Mithras killing the bull of darkness and cold. And you finished your lecture off with... a section about temples about where people went um you emphasize how important and abundant temples were um could you tell me a bit more about them temples in roman britain were not like christian parish churches in medieval britain in other words they're not buildings in which the whole community the local community gathers for worship rather they're houses

for a goddess or god to live in permanently or stay in when passing through the neighbourhood most of them are only large enough for a dozen people So they're private spaces for the deity and for a few, one or a few, worshippers to come in and make private prayers and deals. The really big popular occasions, the seasonal festivals in honour...

of the deity are held in an open space in front of the temple in the open air with a big freestanding altar. And the geography of the temples, was that important where the temple was in relation to a settlement?

There are all sorts of different temples, so the answer of the relationship to a settlement is different in each case. There are urban temples, which are urban facilities like... baths or libraries or meeting houses or town halls and they are there to bring the blessing of powerful deities to the city or the town. There are also private temples erected by landowners and their estates to honour their favourite deities, increasingly towards the end of the Roman period in southern Britain.

There's a new kind of venture, which is a rural pilgrimage temple. this is a complex built for visitors in remote and often rather beautiful countryside it often involves climbing a hill or crossing a bit of water going to some effort and dedicated to one main deity, but with a lot of different goddesses and gods worshipped there as well, and would have usually a hotel, a bathhouse, souvenir stand.

and the temple itself in a precinct. And people would have to travel some distance to these, so they fulfil exactly the emotional dividends of pilgrimage in any religion.

in any age and there are lots of them by the end of the roman period and towards the end you of the roman period you mentioned we moved into the dark ages and the the evidence gets less abundant. Could you talk a bit about this period of time and why is it that we call it the Dark Ages and what was that transition like?

There's no common agreement on whether the expression the Dark Ages should be used at all anymore and there's never been any common agreement on which period should be described by it. I retain the expression very... precisely for the period circa 410 when the Romans pull out. to 597 when the missionary effort arrives from rome to convert the english to christianity because before that and after that you have something like history you know who the

reigning politicians on, statespeople, the rulers, and roughly what they did. In that gap of almost 200 years in between, you don't. We just have no reliable history and virtually no records apart from the deeply ambivalent evidence of archaeology. When you say records, what specifically are we looking for? Are we looking for carvings in stones? what are records okay well under the romans you have inscriptions lots of them different kinds some on stone some on pottery some on

lead tablets. You have written accounts and histories by Romans themselves of what's going on in Britain. at a particular period. You have coinage, which is really useful for dating buildings because Roman emperors tended to lead short, violent lives. They often didn't last very long. And so you can date something within a few years from the last coin to go into the foundations and cross the 410 barrier and all of this disappears.

You're left with crumbling Roman ruins, timber post holes, imported or rather badly made homemade pottery, metalwork. You can't date anything. precisely within about a hundred years or two and you have no idea of who's in charge nobody's writing anything about what's going on in britain and almost nobody is leaving any literary remains inscriptional evidence has gone literacy has disappeared except among a small clerical elite

How surprised are you about that? Are you surprised that that's the case? Are you expecting to find more? No, it's the natural thing that would happen when illiterate tribal peoples take over. what for the time was quite a highly developed civilisation. There's a complete implosion. But the Romans that were writing and writing about it at the time, after they left, isn't there any...

Aren't they still writing about what they left or what it was after they left? The answer is no. There's a complete loss of interest in Britain among them. the surviving Romans they've got a lot in their hands they're being conquered by barbarians themselves and they're fighting for survival which in the end they lose And so Britain is suddenly very far off and unimportant. We do have a few British records from the 5th, early 6th century.

but they're not terribly informative we have two letters from st patrick who quite naturally talks about his own preoccupations in writing a history and we have an amazingly miserable book called The Destruction of Britain. by a guy called Gildas, who's basically there to castigate his own people, the British, for their sins and call them a badly behaved bunch of losers.

His audience would know the problems to which he's referring, so he didn't bother to recount them. It's not a history book, it's a tirade. Thank you. We now move on to our final feature of the podcast. unanswered questions from the online audience. This is a feature where if you watch one of our Gresham lectures live, you are welcome to ask questions.

They are put to the speaker. If we don't have time, we run to an hour. Then we keep them and we put them to the professor in a podcast at a later date. We had a question here. We may have touched upon it in our discussion earlier, but I'll put it to you anyway. The answer to that is no. Religion... and its practices seem pretty evenly spread both across the Roman Empire as a whole and across Roman Britain.

And every time the Romans expand into another part of Britain, the deities they reveal there among the native population by giving them inscriptions. temples and statues look pretty similar to those elsewhere. Thank you, Ronald, for joining me today. I'd just like to ask, you're writing a book or you've currently released a book very recently on Cromwell. Is there any other television shows, books or...

or places that you would like to point people to if they want to see more of you or see more of your writing? If they really want to, Cromwell's in three parts. The book you referred to is part one. I'm writing part two at the moment. But I'm bringing out a pagan book between each instalment of Cromwell to keep fresh. And the most recent book I've published is called Queens of the Wild. And it's a new look at the question of pagan survivals in Christian Europe.

by pointing to a range of superhuman female characters who really do look convincingly pagan. and yet don't seem to be survivors from the old pagan world but to have appeared in the christian centuries so i think that what's going on in the medieval christian world is a lot more interesting ambivalent, enigmatic, creative, dynamic than we have thought. And maybe we need to adapt our language to get rid of the old polarity between pagan and Christian.

Your next lecture on Wednesday, the 7th of June, it's entitled How Pagan Was Medieval Britain? So you finish the timeline. Could you tell me a little bit about what you plan to discuss in that lecture? I plan to ask the question of whether ancient paganism survived in any form into the Christian Middle Ages and beyond. And the answer is, for reasons I shall enunciate, pretty well certainly no, in the sense of a full-blown self-conscious non-Christian resistance religion.

hanging onto the old beliefs but the reason for that is that medieval british christianity in its basic structures was quite remarkably like ancient paganism just had a completely different theology on top of it and explain why this is and how it works and then look at the way in which this medieval religion was annihilated in the early modern period and gave birth to modern forms of Christianity, which eventually resulted not in a more purified Christian society but a multi-faith one.

All of Ronald's previous lectures that he's done for us in this academic year starting in September 2022 can be found on our website, gresham.ac.uk. And our YouTube channel by typing in Gresham College into YouTube, you'll find them all there. Thank you very much for joining us and I hope to see you soon. Thank you. Thank you very much.