Welsh Journals

Chapter V seeks to bring into clearer focus the essential unity of the Celtic Church with the Christianity of the West. The isolation of the Celts has been exaggerated: there was never any question of heresy or even schism, and the points of difference with the Roman Church are points of formal usage only, not of doctrine. This is demonstrable alike in the Celtic missions in Britain and in the continental Celtic foundations. At the close of the chapter the author briefly calls attention to the early Celtic foundations in Spain and Aquitaine, and emphasises the origin of the Celtic form of asceticism and monachism in the eastern Mediterranean. Chapter VI traces the political aspect of the struggle of the Celtic order against the authority imposed by the conquering Anglo-Saxons in Britain and the Franks in Brittany, and later the struggle in Ireland against the Viking invaders. Finally, under Gregory the Great, the entire Western Church united to form the Holy Roman Empire in an alliance which transcended racial and political differences. The Norman Conquest absorbed and transformed the Celtic provincial institutions in the British Isles into the wider pattern of Christendom. In Chapter VII the author claims to trace the same Celtic ardour and enthusiasm which had inspired the early Celtic Church in the modern controversies between the Catholics of Ireland and the Protestant reforms of the Scottish and the Welsh. The writer deserves our gratitude for the lucidity of his analysis of a highly complex subject. The scope of his study covers roughly a millenium, and carries us from the eastern Mediterranean to the Western Isles. The earliest written sources of British Christianity are perhaps not always treated quite as critically as we would wish, but the essential qualities of the Celtic Church and its influence are admirably apprehended. In addition, there is a wealth of modern bibliographical references and much of value in matters of detail. We welcome the insistence on the early sanctus as a savant-an ascetic, but also a man of culture (p. 47); the nature of Celtic ascesis (p. 40 f.); the insistence on the uncompromising heroism of the early Celtic saints (pp. 43-46), especially in Gaul (p. 90). These are only a few of the merits of this valuable and illuminating little book. There is a Tableau chronologique, and two cartes of the area and extent of Celtic Christianity, one for the British Isles, the other for the continent. NORA K. CHADWICK Cambridge THE DRUIDS. By Nora K. Chadwick. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1966. Pp. x + 119. 12s. 6d. No people in Celtic Antiquity has attracted as much attention as the druids, and it is fitting that such a doyen of Celtic studies as Mrs. Chadwick should give us her view on this controversial order. This book differs from many English studies on the subject in that it confines itself to analysing the written sources and makes no attempt to