Message #17520

[Bianca]

Christianity Versus Paganism?




Most histories of Scotland, and Britain, say little of exactly how Christianity became the accepted religion here and it has been suggested that the people of Britain in the 1st to 6th centuries AD saw Christianity as being parallel to their supposed Druidic based beliefs and were happy to accept the new faith.

This seems unlikely particularly when we think that St Constantine, reputed founder of Govan, was himself said to have been martyred in Kintyre in the 6th century. Much of our picture of this period comes from the Life of St Columba and who seems to have been as much a druid as he was a Christian. The story of him having a magic battle with the Druid Briochan in Inverness might easily be a cover for a more standard type of battle.

As all of the early documents we have, were written by monks it is not surprising that the changeover is presented as absolutely natural, even inevitable. Another problem we have in trying to understand those times is that on several occasions in the last millennium Scotland's historic records have been despoiled by invaders - most notably Edward 1 and Oliver Cromwell, although the destruction wreaked upon monasteries and churches at the Protestant Reformation did not improve matters. So we have to combine archaeology, external sources and indigenous traditions to build up a picture of long periods of Scotland's past.