VII. THE WERGELD OF ANCIENT GALLIC CUSTOM. THE EVIDENCE OF CÆSAR.
Cæsar does not state the amount of the Gallic wergeld, but the Druids had jurisdiction in cases of homicide.
There seems to be left but one possible further source of evidence as regards the wergelds of the Gallic tribes before the Roman conquest, viz. that of Cæsar. Speaking of the Druids, his words are these:—
Illi rebus divinis intersunt, sacrificia publica ac privata procurant, religiones interpretantur. Ad eos magnus adulescentium numerus disciplinæ causa concurrit, magnoque hi sunt apud eos honore. Nam fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt, et, si quod est admissum facinus, si cædes facta, si de hereditate, si de finibus controversia est, iidem decernunt, præmia pœnasque constituunt (vi. 13).
There is certainly nothing in these words, when carefully considered, which indicates in the slightest degree whether the Gallic wergeld was fixed, or graduated according to rank. They amount to this:—
The Druids have cognisance of nearly all public and private controversies, and if any crime has been committed, if a murder has been done, if concerning inheritance, if concerning boundaries there is controversy, it is they who decide, and they fix the compensation and penalties.
On the occasion of any murder committed, there would be plenty of room for controversy whether the wergeld were fixed or graduated according to rank, or even, as is quite possible, left open to the judgment of the Druids. So that we gain nothing from Cæsar’s evidence on this particular point, further than that the penalties for slaying were within the jurisdiction of the Druids.
It may, however, be well to notice that this passage has been the subject of controversy upon another point of interest to this inquiry: viz. on the question whether the evidence of Cæsar should be taken as in favour of the theory of the communistic ownership of land in Gaul or that of individual ownership.
M. Fustel de Coulanges[93] has argued with great force that the statement of Cæsar that the Druids were accustomed to settle controversies whether de hereditate or de finibus implies that in his view there must have been something like private property whether of individuals or of families.
The evidence of Cæsar on tribal landholding.
Now if a connection may be traced between the liability of the whole kindred for wergeld and the occupation of land by kindreds, with lesser divisions into something like gwelys, then, without pressing the point too far, without suggesting that the Welsh or the Irish form of tribal occupation of land may have been exactly that which in Cæsar’s time prevailed in Gaul, we may at least say that the analogy of the Welsh and Irish examples would lead us, from a tribal point of view, to judge that the form of land occupation in Gaul was not likely to be either absolute individual or absolute communal ownership. And as under Welsh and Irish tribal custom and forms of land occupation there was plenty of room for public and private controversies both de hereditate and de finibus, it may fairly be suggested that some form of tribal land occupation would at least be more consistent with what Cæsar recorded in the few sentences under review than either complete individual or complete communal ownership would be.
But, passing from the passages already quoted to Cæsar’s further statements relating to the Druids, light seems to pour from them into another matter otherwise very difficult to realise.
It is at first sight with something like amazement that we view the arrogance of the pretension of the missionary priests of the Christian Church to impose what must have been galling penances upon chieftains and tribesmen who had committed crimes of murder or incest. Still more surprised might we well be that they had any chance of securing obedience.
The evidence of Gildas and of the Cadoc records quoted in a former volume is sufficient to show that to a most astonishing extent even chieftains submitted to the penalties and penances imposed by priests and monks who were claiming for themselves immunity from secular services and payments. The very fact that the Ecclesiastical Canons contain the rules we have examined as to the payments for homicide by the kindred of the murderer seems to involve the bold claim of the Church to bring the punishment of crime within its jurisdiction. We have seen also how in these Canons the right of the bishop to be placed in social rank on a level with the highest chieftains and princes and kings was already taken for granted in the corner of Gaul so closely connected with South Wales and Ireland.
The position of the Druids paved the way for clerical pretensions.
The statement of Cæsar opens our eyes to the extent to which under the earliest prevalent system of religious belief the way was paved both for these clerical pretensions and also for the submission of chieftains and people to the penances imposed.
After describing, as above, the prerogatives of the Druids, Cæsar adds a few words to describe the nature of the sanctions by which obedience to their awards was secured:—
vi. xiii. 5. Si qui aut privatus aut populus eorum decreto non stetit, sacrificiis interdicunt. Hæc pœna apud eos est gravissima. Quibus ita est interdictum, hi numero impiorum ac sceleratorum habentur, his omnes decedunt, aditum sermonemque defugiunt, ne quid ex contagione incommodi accipiant, neque his petentibus jus redditur, neque honos ullus communicatur.
Whoever of them, whether a private person or a people, does not stand to the award, they interdict from the sacrifices. This penalty is with them a most heavy one. Those who come under this interdict are looked upon as in the number of the impious and criminal. These all shun, avoiding touch or speech, lest they should be hurt by the contagion. Nor to these is justice given if they seek it, nor is any honour shared with them.
Then in the passage following Cæsar describes how strongly organised was the power which the Druids represented and which they had at their back:—
His autem omnibus Druidibus præest unus, qui summam inter eos habet auctoritatem. Hoc mortuo aut, si qui ex reliquis excellit dignitate, succedit, aut, si sunt plures pares, suffragio Druidum, nonnumquam etiam armis, de principatu contendunt. Hi certo anni tempore in finibus Carnutum, quæ regio totius Galliæ media habetur, considunt in loco consecrato. Huc omnes undique, qui controversias habent, conveniunt, eorumque decretis judiciisque parent.…
Above all these Druids, there is one who holds the chief authority among them. To him, if dead, if there be one of the others excelling in dignity, he succeeds, or if there be many equal, by the suffrage of the Druids, sometimes even by arms, they contend for the chieftainship. At a fixed time of year they hold session in a consecrated place in the district of the Carnutes, which region is held to be the centre of all Gaul. Here all, from everywhere, who have controversies, assemble and submit to their decrees and judgments.…
Druides a bello abesse consuerunt neque tributa una cum reliquis pendunt: militiæ vacationem omniumque rerum habent immunitatem. Tantis excitati præmiis et sua sponte multi in disciplinam conveniunt et a parentibus propinquisque mittuntur.
The Druids are accustomed to keep away from war, nor do they pay tribute with other people; they have exemption from military service and a general immunity. Induced by so great advantages, many join their order both of their own accord and sent by parents and relations.
It is not necessary here to follow further these familiar passages in the ‘De Bello Gallico’ or to inquire more deeply into the religion of the Gauls. It is enough that the religion or superstition of the Gauls was sufficient in itself, and sufficiently deeply believed in, to fortify the influence and power of the Druids with the necessary sanction, and to outlive the disintegration which Roman conquest, in spite of its tolerance to tribal religions, must have in degree produced. The testimony of Renan to the deep-rooted superstition of the Breton population, and the lingering presence even to this day of instincts and customs reaching back to a stratum of indigenous ideas underlying Roman and Christian civilisation, shows, as Irish and Welsh legends do also, that feelings of this kind are not subject to sudden change.
And when we try to realise the position and work of the early Gallic or Breton or Cornish or Welsh or Irish churches from the fifth century onwards, we seem to see how their position and work were made possible only by the fact that what was technically called the conversion of a people to Christianity was not after all so great a revolution as one might at first sight have thought.
The missionary monks or priests, it might almost be said, naturally took the place of the Druids in the minds of the people. They had power to shut out the criminal from the sacrifices of the Christian altar, just as the Druids could from theirs. The conversion, such as it was, meant at least that in the belief of the people the spiritual powers were transferred to the priest, and that the old sanctions of superstition naturally followed the transfer. Thereby was secured to the Church something of the same prestige and power which had once belonged to the priests of the old religion.
The tribes were used to the central power of the Druids and of Imperial Rome and the Church took their place.
When it is considered how the organised and world-wide system of the Church, with its centre in Rome, continuing to some extent the prestige and the civilisation of Imperial Rome, must have appeared to the chieftains and petty kings of uncivilised tribes, it may be recognised that in this respect also it resembled to their eyes the power of the priesthood of the old religion with its centre at Chartres and reaching in its authority from Britain to Southern Gaul. So that in this respect also the way was paved for the Church in the minds of the people. The tribes were used to the idea of a great central spiritual power, and in the Church, by transfer from the old to the new religion, they found it again.
