Depending on what theories you believe, this challenge may have been accomplished IOTL. However, your challenge is to make it happen unambiguously.
AHC: Druids survive into the Medieval era
- Thread starter Mort the Reaper
- Start date
This involves a Rome Screw... but the real question becomes "which Rome screw?" Because screwing Rome too hard arguably stops you getting a medieval era as we know it.
The easiest POD (to a degree that constitutes cheating) is kill off Patrick, since that keeps Druids in Ireland past A.D. 476... the technical start of the medieval era.
The easiest POD (to a degree that constitutes cheating) is kill off Patrick, since that keeps Druids in Ireland past A.D. 476... the technical start of the medieval era.
Would an unsuccessful second Roman invasion of Britain do the trick? Would they attempt a 3rd or just write it off? Alternatively would a successful Boudica's Rebellion keep them from coming back to establish a presence? I could see a punitive expedition like after Teutoberg Forest, but they might decide it's not worth the cost to hold. There'd still be considerable trade between Roman lands and the isles, but it might make Hibernia and Caledonia far enough removed from the Roman sphere that the culture isn't completely erased.
Easiest way , big storm when the 2nd invasion of Britain is launched. Loss of large portion of the fleet with none reaching Britain. Lots of people will say its the Will of the Gods and Claudius will not risk another try ( main purpose of the 2nd invasion was to give Claudius a Triumph ). After that Rome will probably distract itself for long enough that the expansion phase passes.
Nothing the Romans were doing would affect Religion in Britain ( if its just traders then its really pots and fancy goods not culture outside the South Coast) really until the Empire goes Christian and Missionaries are probably sent. What happens then is all on oratory ( does not help we know so little about Druids apart from what the Romans wrote. Trouble being the Romans were writing propaganda not objectively so what to believe is a problem )
Nothing the Romans were doing would affect Religion in Britain ( if its just traders then its really pots and fancy goods not culture outside the South Coast) really until the Empire goes Christian and Missionaries are probably sent. What happens then is all on oratory ( does not help we know so little about Druids apart from what the Romans wrote. Trouble being the Romans were writing propaganda not objectively so what to believe is a problem )
Assuming butterflies don't take him out... you can't see Trajan having a go?
Trajan will still go for Dacia to shorten the borders and after that his focus seems more on the East than the West. I just cannot see him going for Britain as its not likely to be raiding the Empire and its not rich enough. We have 14 legions on the Danube after Dacia is incorporated and he seems to be looking at Parthia (OTL his final campaign ) , so its hard to imagine where the troops would come from for a British adventure in any case.
His successor Hadrian is the one that built the wall marking the end of Roman territory in Britain among a host of measures reducing expansion so ITTL would be unlikely to invade Britain. After that the only emperor is possibly Septimius Severus but we are in the 3rd Century by then so I think he would not bother and more likely end up in Germania.
Couldn't Ireland oppose Christianization untill Late Medieval period the way Prussians and Lithuanians did?
Paradoxically the way to do that might be by having the Romans be more successful, enough so to launch a proper invasion of Hibernia. The invasion gets bogged down, though, and as a result it gets fierce and the Irish grow to hate Rome and its cultural exports, including Christianity.
Have Druid religion being codified in a script in Antiquity spreading to all Celtic realms, from Hibernia to Galatia, from Iberia to Norricum. Maybe a Celtic Bible in Greek letters is the best solution. A Druid Bible and a reformed Celtic faith. Maybe connect it with a common Celtic language codified with the Greek alphabet.
You are dealing with a culture where the underlying religious tradition is fundamentally hostile to the written word. Druids didn't operate like that.
Well, there were already other missionaries in Ireland by the time of Patrick (in fact, there may well have been two Patricks, for that matter). So, I'm not entirely sure that removing THE Patrick would really stop Irish conversion - likely someone else comes along and does the same thing.
But, here's the thing: Irish conversion took some time. As late as the 6th century there appears to have still been a sizable pagan population on the Island (and, for that matter, in Britain. Considering the number of Irish missionaries in the Old North and even Wales during this time, one has to think that Christian conversion in Britain hadn't been as successful as if often assumed, or that it was only really successful amongst the Roman urban elites). So I think there would be some ways to roll back the Christianization somewhat. The problem, of course, is that conversion brought with it a lot of benefits - cultural connection to the Roman West, trade benefits, and so forth. And it also seems as if at least some of the early converts were Druids themselves. So we'd have to find a reason why staying pagan would be in the best interest of the Gaels.
Perhaps we have a more successful raiding culture develop in Ireland that gives the Irish a mini-Viking Age (something I have happen in my TL, though the Irish are still Christians in that world). There's a lot less problems with raiding rich monastaries if you're pagan than one might have if they were Christian after all.
I'm not sure that's the biggest problem- the Vedas for example go on for a bit about how no one who knows how to write or has ever read anything is pure enough to recite the Vedas, but that didn't stop Hindus from writing down the earliest surviving Indo European prose, and in early Islam as well they were pretty opposed to actually writing down any hadiths as they thought that was an immoral way of memorising them.
Theoretically speaking, you don't *have* to prevent christianization to keep druids.
First of all lets keep in mind that "Druid" meant different things to different celtic groups at different times. By the time Ireland starts having a surviving historical record druids had lost basically all of their religious functions (if the irish ones had them to begin with), and were primarily a sort of war-wizard that fighting bands would bring with them to curse their enemies and the like, and there are a few examples of these types of druids being Christian i think.
The second is that irish Christians, even the clergy, could be startlingly blasphemous and heretical, *and Rome let them get away with it for centuries*, because they didn't spread their ideas around.
So its conceivably possible that you could have christian holy men as war wizards, "druids", well into the medieval and even early modern era when having an occultic specialist or three on hand was popular. Druids in this sense could last a very long time.
Unfortunately thats sticking closer to the wording of the thread title rather than the spirit as expressed in the tags.
First of all lets keep in mind that "Druid" meant different things to different celtic groups at different times. By the time Ireland starts having a surviving historical record druids had lost basically all of their religious functions (if the irish ones had them to begin with), and were primarily a sort of war-wizard that fighting bands would bring with them to curse their enemies and the like, and there are a few examples of these types of druids being Christian i think.
The second is that irish Christians, even the clergy, could be startlingly blasphemous and heretical, *and Rome let them get away with it for centuries*, because they didn't spread their ideas around.
So its conceivably possible that you could have christian holy men as war wizards, "druids", well into the medieval and even early modern era when having an occultic specialist or three on hand was popular. Druids in this sense could last a very long time.
Unfortunately thats sticking closer to the wording of the thread title rather than the spirit as expressed in the tags.
Well, the Irish had a written language (Ogham) and the Gauls were using Greek and Latin writing, is it unreasonable for, in an atl, for Druids in a generation two or after driving back those horrid Romans and making Ceasar's head a beautiful spear decoration attitudes couldn't evolve.
And no, it didn't happen in Ireland otl, but Ireland was the Celtic equivalent of North Dakota while Gaul and Albion were figuratively New York and L.A. in comparison.
Look at our society, 800 years ago it was unChristian to charge interest. Why couldn't the Celts have a similar attitude shift in regard to writing? Especially since there are signs it was happening in the Archeological record?
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An exiled Irish prince apparently spent some time with Agricola, at least according to Tacitus, so maybe they back a losing horse at some point and the Irish start resenting Roman interference in their affairs.