17 - Spiritual Life

Religion in Roman Britain as in the rest of the Roman Empire was taken very seriously indeed. So much so that during the religious upheaval of the fourth century the Roman Empire was split in two with a Christianised Emperor and administration hiving off the eastern half of the Empire with a new capital at Constantinople, leaving the western half as a subordinate appendage with a 'Caesar' as ruler in Rome in place of the senior emperor.

This preoccupation with religion, of course, had been characteristic of previous ages and was to continue in Europe until modern times. To a large extent it was due to a lack of scientific knowledge of the world and the compulsion of mankind to attribute events to the workings of deities outside their everyday experience.

The Romans were interested in other people's religions as well as their own and were very ready to accept fresh beliefs if they seemed to be at all plausible. This accounts for the steady stream of new cults that arose in the east and spread westwards through the Empire.

One of the religions that particularly interested them was the indigenous religion of continental Europe which we usually refer to as the Celtic religion that we described in our pages on the Iron Age. So interested were the Romans that they made a serious study of it and identified many of the celtic deities with the gods and goddesses in their own pantheon and conflated them. Hence, for example, Sulis (celtic goddess) -Minerva (classical equivalent goddess) at the Romano-British cult shrine of Aquae Sulis (Bath).

In Britain one can detect not only this strong interest but a more practical involvement in the celtic religion. How this operated it is difficult to understand but the result was that Roman-style temples were erected on the sites of Iron Age shrines, Roman-style buildings formed complexes on some sites which were clearly aimed at attracting pilgrims, statues of celtic deities appeared for the first time and written requests to deities became a common way of addressing them. One finds it difficult not to feel that a new commercial attitude to religion had appeared in Britain.

Basically, however, the religion was the same as it was in the Iron Age but stripped of its druidic priests who had been the epitome of the British spirit of resistance to the Romans and had been wiped out by the military as a consequence. No doubt the men who replaced them were far more amenable to the Roman authorities and may have been instrumental in introducing the changes itemised above.

We know nothing of the organisation of Romano-Celtic religion. Little is known of British priests or of the financiers who must have provided the means to build the temple-complexes which in Picardy in France are of monumental proportions complete with theatres, temples and a large number of anciliary buildings and are approached in magnificence in Britain by sanctuaries like Bath and Lydney.

In Picardy there is a variety of lesser sanctuaries including those associated with settlements, fana accompanied by fairly extensive buildings which French archaeologists suggest are perhaps for local pilgrimage, isolated enclosed fana and very small unenclosed sanctuaries. So far in Britain not enough sites are known or fully planned or excavated to provide the data to make this sort of classification.

If we start with the largest examples we have in Britain we can consider Bath and Lydney, one of which is well-preserved and the other fully excavated and both open to inspection today. From contemporary documentary evidence we know that Bath was visited by people from both abroad and from Britain and at Lydney accommodation for pilgrims has been uncovered. We know that at Bath part of the attraction was the healing water but we also have numbers of defixiones, written requests to the deity for favours in exchange for gifts presented to the shrine, which deal with all manner of everyday problems and which show that not all visitors were concerned with their health.

An example of such a defixione from Bath begins with the words 'May he who carried off Vilbia from me become as liquid as water.' This is followed by a list of names. The inscription was written, as is often the case, with each word reversed. Apparently the author was in love with Vilbia and wished the goddess to remove his rivals from the contest. It was inscribed on a lead plaque as most examples are and found in the sacred spring.

Bath itself was a settlement of some five hectares that grew up around the sanctuary. A substantial suburb also developed to the east along the London road. Excavation has always been difficult in Bath because of the presence of the Georgian town built on top of the Roman settlement so that, although the arrangements of the bathing establishment and temple are known, details of the rest of the complex are still unclear.

The baths originally included three deep plunge baths built at the end of the first century AD. The Lucas Bath, on the east, measured some nine metres by four and a half and was about one and a half metres deep and entered down three large steps. The bottom was covered with sheets of lead over a centimetre in thickness which were removed by the Victorians. At each end were apsidal plunge baths, one a metre in depth, the other deeper, with a cement seat running round it. On the west of the Lucas Bath was the Great Bath, situated like the Lucas Bath, in a large space which measured some 35 by 20.5 metres that was later roofed with a tunnel vault composed of hollow bricks.

On one side of the bath was a cold-water fountain and further west a small rectangular room housed a circular swimming bath. Heated smaller baths lay further to the west and on the north is the reservoir which received the healing water from the hot spring. At a later time, Roman bath suites of the traditional kind with hypocaust rooms were built both at the east and west ends of the complex.

Outside the complex to the north is the remains of the classical temple dedicated to Sulis Minerva and one of the altars from the precinct still exists. There were probably other altars and statues dotted around the precinct and it is known that to the east of the precinct underneath the medieval abbey lay another large Roman building, possibly a theatre for religious performances as is found in the great sanctuaries of Picardy.

In the settlement that surrounded the complex a tombstone has been found that was set up for a priest who served in the temple. It was erected to Gaius Calpurnius Receptus who died at the age of seventy- five by his wife and freedwoman (formerly his slave) Calpurnia Petronia. She followed the custom of freed slaves in adding the name of her patron to her own. Altars set up in the town and mainly dedicated to Sulis-Minerva also record the people who had visited the town and received a blessing of some sort. These altars are expressions of their gratitude. They include soldiers and a stonemason from near Chartres in France.

The tombstones provide us with the same sort of evidence and record a variety of civilian visitors as well. One could suggest that the settlement around the sanctuary provided lodgings, entertainment and food and drink for the visitors in much the same way as in eighteenth-century Bath though whether it was as much of a 'sin city' is something we can only imagine for ourselves.

Lydney was a rural sanctuary built within an earlier Iron Age hillfort shortly after AD364 and so perhaps symbolised something of the ancestral traditions of the people. A temple, measuring 25.9m by 20.4m is entered by a flight of steps which lead up through a wide encircling passage containing five alcoves or niches for altars. In the centre of the building is the central cella or 'holy of holies'. At the north-western end facing the visitor is a triple, longitudinal sanctuary. The temple is dedicated to Nodens, a British god of healing. A lead defixione found there reads 'To the god Nodens, Silvanus has lost a ring, he hereby gives half of it (half its value) to Nodens, Among those who are called Senicianus do not allow health until he brings it to the temple of Nodens.'

It is puzzling to understand how these curses worked. Did the 'cursee' tell the 'cursed' that he had approached the god and hope that the fear of the god's wrath would bring about a reformation in the culprit?

Along the west side of the enclosure behind the temple is a narrow range of eleven rooms with a corridor in front from which each of the rooms could be accessed. There is some argument as to the use of these chambers. It has been suggested that they were used by patients coming into the complex for cures, perhaps as wards for patients with contagious diseases, or they may have been a row of shops for the scribes who wrote out the defixiones and for entrepreneurs who sold votive offerings or cheap souvenirs.

Abutting them to the north is a large and elaborate bath-suite with caldaria (hot rooms) and sudatoria (sweating-rooms) heated by three furnaces and a frigidarium (cold room) with its plastered walls painted with bands of red and yellow. Floors were paved with stone slabs and one room, perhaps another frigidarium, had a floor of opus signinum (red coloured cement). At a later period, a stone bench was made around its walls and the central area filled with a geometric mosaic (the technique of decorating a floor or wall with a pattern or picture made up of small coloured fragments of stone, pottery or glass known as tessarae (sing. Tessera)) of a pelta pattern (a pelta is a crescent-shaped shield) in yellow, red, white and blue. A small mosaic for the apse of one of the heated rooms shows a two-handled vase in a border of guilloche (cable pattern).

The exterior of the bath-suite was painted a deep crimson with a partial later redecoration in greenish- yellow. To the north lay a water tank that provided the water for the baths through a conduit.

East of the baths was a large house with rooms surrounding a central courtyard that was entered through a reception hall on the south-western side. Measuring nearly forty metres by forty-nine, it must have been an imposing building, presenting an impressive facade to the visitors as they toiled up the steep path to the complex. It was probably used as a reception building and hotel. From the hall visitors could proceed into the courtyard to relax in the open air or be ushered along the corridors surrounding the courtyard to suites of rooms in the north and western wings. Some rooms had mosaic floors and decorated walls. On the eastern side of the courtyard was a stable and carriage-shed.

Numerous votive offerings were found in the excavation including several models of dogs that probably had some special significance in the cult of Nodens. Cult animals figure in most religions and are still prominent in many religions of the present day.

The temple at Bath was of the classical type and stands on a podium approached by a flight of steps up to a portico that is fronted by columns. A portico of two columns is known as a distyle, one of four columns, a tetrastyle, six columns, a hexastyle, eight, an octastyle, ten, a decastyle and so on. Behind the portico is the entrance to the cella, the holy of holies which had no windows and contained the cult statue of the god. Sometimes, exterior walls of a temple were surrounded by rows of columns placed at the edge of the podium. This left a corridor between the columns, known as a peristyle, and the cella. In other cases, half columns were placed against the walls which were flush with the edge of the podium.

There are many variations on this basic plan which the Romans originally copied from the Greeks. At Lydney, the ambulatory between where the peristyle would be in a classical temple and the cella is part of the enclosed building and is divided up into alcoves. There is a triangular temple in St Albans and examples of circular classical temples are known on the Continent.

A temple which closely resembles a classical temple is one in Wroxeter but the best example was the temple of Claudius in Colchester on whose podium a Norman castle now stands.

Most Romano-Celtic temples were small with a central cella set on a podium surrounded by an ambulatory which was bounded by a low wall which supported a verandah-type roof over the ambulatory. The temple in insula (pl. insulae, block of buildings in a town) xxxv in Silchester is a good example, square in plan; octagonal examples are known from Weycock (Berkshire) and Caerwent and in the building at Pagan's Hill in Somerset, the octagonal outer colonnade was replaced with a solid wall; and a circular temple was uncovered at Lullingstone.

All these stood on the original sites of Iron Age shrines and are an example of how the Roman influence on the native religion resulted in a formalisation of its practice. Each temple probably stood in a temple precinct in which altar(s) and statues were placed. In this precinct, worshippers made their sacrifices while the priest officiated in the cella. There seem to have been a considerable number of these temples in Roman Britain reflecting the ubiquity of the celtic shrines of the Iron Age.

The Roman authorities tolerated all sorts of religions but they did expect every Roman citizen to make an annual sacrifice to the gods of the Roman state. A variety of religions originated in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. In London there was a temple dedicated to Isis, the Egyptian god.

Another cult was popular amongst the military and was the worship of the Persian god Mithras who brought salvation to the human race by the slaying of a huge bull and was closely asscociated with the sun. There were seven grades of initiation, each with its revelations, ceremonies and ordeals. Mithraea are known from about half a dozen places in Britain with the best examples, which are still visible, in London and at Carrowburgh near to Hadrian's Wall.

The London example was found at Walbrook and consisted of a rectangular building, 7.6m by 18.28 with an apse at the west end and a narthex (entrance hall) at the east. The interior was divided into nave and two aisles, like a church and lit by a few small windows. Benches were placed in the aisles where worshippers reclined. In the apse was a raised platform and a representation of Mithras slaying a bull and altars and a timber-lined well were placed at the entrance to the sanctuary. A very large amount of statuary was found in or near the temple including representations of Mithras slaying the bull, a bust of Mithras wearing a Phrygian (Persian) cap and statues of the gods Serapis, Bacchus and Mercury.

The temple at Carrowburgh is similar in shape but rather smaller than the one in London. In its final form there was a square apse at the north-western end and an ordeal pit and a hearth beside the entrance in the narthex at the other end. Three altars were discovered in the excavation and evidence shows that the floor of the nave was carpeted with heather. There were signs suggesting that the temple was destroyed during the fourth century perhaps by christians after Christianity had been adopted as the official religion of the Roman Empire. Christians were particularly enraged at Mithraism because it bore certain resemblances to their own beliefs.

Beside the mithraeum at Carrowburgh was an open-air shrine dedicated to the Nymphs and the Genius of the Place consisting of a paved area bounded on the southern side by an apsidal wall with a low bench built against it. An altar stood in the paved area and was dedicated by the Prefect (commanding officer) of a the garrison of a nearby fort. Close by was a well. Shrines of this sort may well have been common during the Roman period and seem to be the equivalent of the open-air shrines of the Iron Age.

It was in AD312 that the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. But places of christian worship existed before this time. The earliest christian meeting- places were domus ecclesiae (house churches) known as tituli in Rome and were buildings acquired by a congregation and converted for worship. They could be quite spacious places. Some included a meeting-room, a classroom for postulants (converts), a baptistery, offices, quarters for the clergy, closets to store food and clothing for the poor and, sometimes, a reception room for a bishop.

An example of such a place is a town house in Dura Europos on the Euphrates in Syria but there were a variety of locations. One was a hall in the garden of an elegant mansion which is now below the church of S Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. Another was a large room in a villa (below S Sabina in Rome) and another a tenement now incorporated in the foundations and a side wall of SS Giovanni e Paolo in Rome.

The emperor Constantine built the first churches near Rome. Even he could not overcome the hostility of the traditional establishment to the new religion and so these churches were constructed on his estates well away from the pagan centre of the city. The first was the Lateran basilica, started perhaps as early as c313. Later came the basilica on the Vatican hill which is now the site of St Peter's. Martyr's and cemetery churches were built on burial grounds which, of course, in Roman times, were always situated outside the city walls. But, by between AD380 and 440, prejudice was dying away and nearly half of the domus ecclesiae in the city were being replaced with named purpose-built churches.

Outside Rome, Bishop Ambrose built in Milan the Basilica Nova between 345 and 350 and one of the Milan churches (S Simpliciano) became the model for a large number of churches built all over northern Italy and the Alpine regions. Constantine founded the city of Byzantium, the new capital of the Roman Empire, and it was a christian city from the first with christian basilican churches remains of which can still be seen.

In Britain domus ecclesiae have been identified in villas. Lullingstone had an upper room with wall- paintings depicting figures some of whom stand with outstretched arms as if in prayer. On another wall was a chi-rho symbol painted red on a white background. This monogram includes the first two letters of the Greek word 'cristos' meaning Christ. Other colours used in the room were pink, red and purple.

Elsewhere, the villas at Hinton St Mary and Frampton in Dorset have mosaic floors incorporating christian symbols. At Hinton St Mary is a bust of Christ with a chi-rho symbol in the background and at Frampton one of the mosaics in an apsidal room shows a chalice and a chi-rho. Again, these rooms could have been parts of domus ecclesiae.

A church has been identified at Silchester with a possible baptistery outside it to the east. It consisted of a nave with aisles alongside it entered through a narthex at the eastern end and with a semi-circular apse at the west. No finds were made inside the building which could prove conclusively that it was a church but the probability is very strong. At Richborough inside the Saxon Shore Fort was a timber-framed building and an external baptistery with a font sunk into the ground lined with waterproof cement that is thought to have been a church. Another possibility is a building at Caerwent while there may have been a cemetery church at Verulamium and Icklingham in Suffolk.

Outside the Roman town of Dorchester is the late-Roman burial ground of Poundbury that has been identified as a christian cemetery. Apparently it grew out of s private graveyard belonging to a courtyard house in the town. It contains a number of mausolea of which one was decorated with a wall-painting depicting human figures. Some burials were in lead-lined or stone coffins and some were 'plaster' burials in which attempts were made to preserve the body by encasing it in plaster. There were some 4000 burials in the cemetery which must represent a sizable christian community that included the firm of mosaicists who laid the Hinton St Mary and Frampton christian mosaics.

Other evidence for Christianity occurs as isolated finds of objects with christian associations or marked with christian symbols. A hoard of silver and gold vessels was found at Chesterton in Cambridgeshire some years back. Many of the thirty pieces were marked with the chi-rho symbol and it seems likely that it was the property of a christian community. At Cirencester the discovery of an acrostic or word- square:

R O T A S

O P E R A

T E N E T

A R E P O

S A T O R

provides evidence for christianity. If the letters of this nonsensical message are re-arranged, they form a cross with a common N, each arm being made up of the words PATERNOSTER, the opening words of the Lord's Prayer with A and O left over which represent the 'beginning and the end' in the Revelation of St John.

Objects with christian inscriptions are quite often found like gold rings marked with the chi-rho or silver spoons which may have been baptismal presents. They can be inscribed with phrases like PASCENTIA VIVAS (from the Mildenhall treasure) or AVGVSTINE VIVAS (from Dorset) 'so-and-so' lives. Large round lead tanks are sometimes marked with the chi-rho and were used for the novitiate to stand in while being baptised by having water poured over their head. Some pewter bowls adorned with christian emblems are suggested as church plate. So evidence for christian activity in the later Roman period is by no means lacking. However, the quality of the objects found and the location of the christian gathering-places does suggest that membership of the church was mainly confined to people of some wealth and standing in the community and their families.

Literary evidence tells us that in Ad 314 three British bishops attended the Council of Arles from York, London and, probably, Colchester but their cathedrals have not yet been uncovered. However, Bede tells us that a 'church of wondrous workmanship' was erected on the hill-top site of the martyrdom of St Alban outside the Roman town of prsent-day St Albans. It became a centre of miraculous cures and was restored by the English in the eighth century. Bede also mentions two churches in Canterbury that he says had survived from the Roman period.

Except in families of strong tradition, Christianity died away at the end of the Roman period but it was not extinct. The faith still lingered on amongst some people in eastern England and certainly remained strong in western Britain amongst the aristocracy and was taken by one member of that class who had become a bishop to Ireland during the fifth century. (St Patrick)

The art of Roman Britain is not distinguished which is a disappointment after the flowering of the celtic art style during the second half of the preceding Iron Age. Celtic art does not survive or, at least, does not appear in the archaeological record, during the Roman period. It is possible that it did to some extent amongst ordinary people, making wooden objects and textiles in their own homes, but it certainly didn't amongst the upper classes who enthusiastically embraced the classical fashions in all areas. It is the wall paintings that they commissioned and the mosaics that they laid on their dining-room floors that survive.

Most, if not all of this work, was in the hands of native craftsmen who originally learnt their trades from Roman or Continental entrepreneurs and their work is best represented by fourth-century walls and floors in the large villas of that period. The best mosaics like, for example, those at Lullingstone, approach the standard of those of the Mediterranean, but there is a good deal of mediocre work on other villas. It would be unfair to make the same sort of comparison with the wall-painting since so little of it survives but the fragments that we have so far found do not match up to the standard of work at, for example, Pompeii.

We do have a few busts and a number of statuettes of gods that vary a good deal in quality. Some of the busts, like that of Mithras from the London mithraeum, are of fine workmanship and some of the religious carvings like that of Mithras slaying the bull are too but many of the statuettes of gods are extremely poor. Some students suggest that the high standard work is imported and the poorer quality of native workmanship but this may be too simplistic a judgement.

A more popular taste is represented by the many brooches that are discovered in excavation. They can be used for dating purposes since they have been classified into a typological sequence. Many are British products, others made on the Continent. Most are derived from the simple safety- pin brooch or fibula that was developed during the Iron Age.

By the first century AD there were many variations on this theme: spring-pins, hinge-pins, bow- brooches and plate-brooches. Many disc brooches are of continental origin and can be enamelled or use coloured glass to imitate semi-precious jewels. The same is true of the plate-brooches which can have designs of recognisable objects on them like axes, horseriders and so on or are decorated with symbols like the swastika. Others are zoomorphic representing a dog, fish, bird or a fly or are modelled in the round and enamelled.

Penannular brooches were also popular and together with the cross-bow, also popular during the fourth-century, developed into elaborate decorative articles during the Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods.

None of these designs have much to do with celtic art or even with classical art and perhaps simply represent the common taste of the period that succeeds the Iron Age in Europe.

Jewellery was very popular during the period but again does not suggest a very high standard of artistic endeavour even though the craftsmanship may be adequate. Rich women possessed bracelets, armlets, rings, necklaces and ear-rings made in gold occasionally adorned with stones like sapphires. Very often they are made from gold wire and necklaces seem to have been used as a convenient device for suspending pendants.

Bead necklaces were commonly worn, the beads being made of glass, coral, amber, jet, ivory, bone, shell, pottery or stone. Sometimes the 'melon bead' is used which was made of glass frit, covered with turquoise glaze and ridged like a cantelupe. Bracelets are also frequently found and range from plain armlets of shale, jet, bone or ivory to various bronze types. More expensive ones, of course, are made of silver or gold and can be massive. Very often they are engraved with serpent or snake designs. Some are decorated with semi-precious stones or made of twisted gold or silver wire.

Rings occur in endless varieties. They are by far the most popular type of jewellery for all ages and both sexes. Some wore a ring on every finger. Some rings were made simply to fit over the upper joint of the finger. They are made of gold, silver, gilded bronze, bronze, bronze wire, iron, jet and glass and sometimes set with intaglios of glass or semi-precious stones. These intaglios are sometimes found without the rings which presumably were being re-used or melted down. The integlios very often show figures of gods or portraits and these are inevitably done in the classical style but not always very skilfully.

Pins, too, very used in large quantities. For fastening clothes there were simple bone and bronze pins with round heads which can be made of a various materials like jet, silver or pearls. Decorative pins were probably used as hairpins to fasten together the rather elaborate hair-dos that seem to have been popular at the time. The heads of these pins are sometimes shaped like a pair of hands or a hand holding fruit but often they are busts of goddesses or empresses who were fashion icons during the Roman period. They inevitably have elaborate head- or hair-pieces.

Such are the sorts of decorative objects that have come down to us from the Roman period and on the whole they are pretty uninspiring. What little silver plate has survived to us is in the classical style but, of course, it only appeared on the wealthiest tables. Occasionally one finds examples of decorated stone or lead coffins. They sometimes bear portrait busts, baskets of fruits, scallop shells, lions, or human figures and in fact are often more interesting from the decorative point of view than many objects that were made to be used above-ground.

16 - Rural Prosperity
Contents
18 - End of Empire