The training of a Druid, according to the testimony of the classical authors and the medieval insular sources, was one of the longest and most demanding of any educational tradition in the ancient world, a formal course of study that could occupy a generation of an individual’s life and that laid the foundation for a career of religious, judicial, and political authority. To examine how long Druidic training took is to enter the world of the Druids and the priestly class at the point where their role as the custodians of Celtic tradition is most clearly visible, and to understand the extraordinary investment of time, memory, and social resources that the Celtic peoples were willing to make in the education of their religious and intellectual elite. As part of the larger context of Celtic religion, mythology, and spirituality, the training of the Druids is a striking example of the importance attached to learning and to the transmission of knowledge in the older Celtic world.
The Twenty-Year Course of Study
The most explicit statement of the length of Druidic training comes from Julius Caesar, who in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico reports that the Druids of Gaul spent twenty years in training before they were fully qualified to practice their art. Caesar’s statement, while it is brief, is consistent with the other classical sources and with the medieval insular tradition, and it is generally accepted as substantially accurate. Twenty years is, by any standard, an extraordinarily long period of training, far longer than the formal education of a Greek or Roman citizen, and it suggests that the Druidic curriculum was one of the most demanding of any educational tradition in the ancient world.
The twenty-year period of training was, however, not the entire span of a Druid’s education. Caesar’s report implies that the training was divided into stages, and that the student was gradually inducted into the various aspects of Druidic knowledge and practice. The early years of training were probably devoted to the acquisition of basic skills, including the memorization of the verse and prose material that formed the core of the Druidic curriculum. The later years were devoted to more advanced studies, including theology, natural philosophy, astronomy, and the interpretation of omens. The completion of the full course marked the formal entry of the student into the order, and only those who had completed the full course were entitled to perform the major religious and judicial functions of the Druidic office.
The Oral Tradition and the Prohibition of Writing
The most striking feature of Druidic training, and the one that most impressed the classical authors, was its reliance on memorization. According to Caesar, the Druids considered it improper to commit their teachings to writing, although they used the Greek alphabet for some purposes, including the keeping of public and private accounts. The reason for this prohibition is not entirely clear, and the classical sources offer various explanations. Caesar himself suggests that the prohibition had two purposes: to prevent the teachings from being disseminated to the general public, and to ensure that the students exercised their memory. Other classical sources, including Diodorus Siculus, suggest that the prohibition was related to the belief that the spoken word had a particular power that was not shared by the written word, a belief that is consistent with the importance attached to the spoken word in many other ancient cultures.
The scale of the memorization required of a Druid student was, by the testimony of the classical sources, enormous. Caesar reports that the students were required to memorize a vast body of verse, including theogonies, cosmologies, the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the principles of natural philosophy, and the legal and customary precedents of the Celtic peoples. The total length of the material that had to be memorized has been estimated at thousands of lines of verse, and the ability to recite this material accurately and fluently was the mark of a fully trained Druid. The memory of the trained Druid was, in the classical view, comparable to the memory of the trained Homeric bard, and the two traditions of oral learning have often been compared in modern scholarship.
The Subjects of Druidic Study
The classical sources give us a partial picture of the subjects that formed the core of the Druidic curriculum. Caesar mentions theology, the laws of nature, astronomy, and the doctrines of the immortality of the soul. Diodorus Siculus, drawing on the earlier work of Posidonius, mentions natural philosophy, the doctrines of the soul, the observation of celestial phenomena, and the study of the calendar. Pomponius Mela mentions the practice of divination and the interpretation of omens. Pliny the Elder mentions the study of the properties of plants, particularly the mistletoe and the selago, and the use of the eggs of certain birds for divination. The medieval insular sources add a range of additional subjects, including law, history, genealogy, poetry, and the various magical arts.
The combination of subjects that the Druids studied is striking, and it suggests that the Druidic curriculum was not narrowly religious in the modern sense but covered a wide range of what we would now call philosophical, scientific, and humanistic learning. The study of astronomy, for example, was not only a religious matter but also a practical one, since the Celtic calendar was determined by astronomical observations. The study of natural philosophy, similarly, had both a theoretical and a practical dimension, and the various medical and pharmacological references in the Druidic sources suggest that the study of the natural world had important practical applications. The training of a Druid, in other words, was not the training of a specialist in a single field but the training of a generalist who could apply his learning to a wide range of religious, judicial, and political problems.
The Insular Tradition of Bardic Training
The medieval Irish and Welsh sources preserve a detailed picture of the training of the bardic and ecclesiastical class that is a direct descendant of the older Druidic tradition, and that gives us a clearer sense of what the older training may have involved. The training of an Irish filidh, or court poet, lasted up to twelve years, and was divided into a number of stages, each with its own formal curriculum and its own examination. The early stages of training were devoted to the basic skills of the poet, including the mastery of the metrical forms, the memorization of the traditional material, and the development of the technical skills of composition. The later stages were devoted to the more advanced aspects of the art, including the composition of praise poems, the use of the more obscure metrical forms, and the development of a personal style.
The training of a Welsh bardd, or court poet, was similarly long and demanding, and was divided into a number of formal grades, each with its own curriculum and its own requirements. The Welsh tradition, like the Irish, places great emphasis on the memorization of traditional material, and the surviving examples of medieval Welsh poetry show a level of technical sophistication that could only have been achieved by years of formal training. The bardic class of medieval Ireland and Wales, although it was not strictly Druidic, was a direct descendant of the older Druidic class, and many of the features of bardic training, including the long period of formal study, the memorization of traditional material, the division into stages, and the formal examination, are clearly derived from the older tradition.
The Social Context of Training
The training of a Druid, like the training of a bard, was not only a matter of formal education but also a matter of social and economic investment. The students, who were typically drawn from the noble families of the Celtic world, were supported during their long years of training by their families, by the kings or chiefs who sponsored them, or by the religious communities that housed them. The cost of supporting a student for twenty years, in a society where most people were farmers and where the standard of living was modest, was substantial, and it suggests that the training of a Druid was seen as a worthwhile investment by the elite who paid for it.
The recruitment of students for Druidic training was probably restricted to the noble class, although the evidence is not entirely clear on this point. Caesar’s statement that the Druids were responsible for the education of the young of noble families suggests that the formal training of the next generation of the elite was in the hands of the Druids, and the long period of training required for full qualification in the Druidic order would have been possible only for those who could afford to spend twenty years in study. The training of a bard, similarly, was restricted to the noble class, and the entry into the bardic order of medieval Ireland and Wales was closely regulated by the social and economic status of the candidates.
The Decline of the Druidic Order
The training of the Druids came to an end, in most of the Celtic-speaking regions, with the decline of the Druidic order itself under Roman and Christian pressure. The Roman conquest of Gaul in the late first century BCE brought the Druidic order under direct Roman attack. Tiberius, the Roman emperor from 14 to 37 CE, issued an edict suppressing Druidism, partly because of the perceived threat of Druidic political influence and partly because of the Roman distaste for practices such as human sacrifice. Claudius, the emperor from 41 to 54 CE, reinforced the prohibition, and by the second century CE the formal Druidic order had largely disappeared from Gaul.
In Britain, the Druids survived somewhat longer. The famous assault on the sanctuary of the Druids of Anglesey by the Roman general Suetonius Paulinus in 60 CE was a major blow, but Druidic activity continued in the more remote parts of the British Isles into the second and possibly the third century CE. In Ireland, which was never conquered by Rome, the Druidic order survived into the early medieval period, and the early Irish saints’ lives are full of dramatic confrontations between Christian missionaries and Druidic opponents. The ultimate fate of the Irish Druidic order is not entirely clear, but the formal class seems to have gradually disappeared, with its religious functions absorbed by the Christian clergy, its educational functions by the monastic schools, and its judicial and political functions by the secular authorities.
The Legacy of Druidic Training
The long and demanding training of the Druids, although the formal order has long since disappeared, has left a deep mark on the cultural and educational traditions of the Celtic-speaking regions. The medieval Irish and Welsh bardic schools, with their long courses of training, their emphasis on memorization, and their formal division into stages and grades, are a direct continuation of the older Druidic tradition, and the long period of formal education that characterizes the Celtic monastic tradition is a further development of the same pattern. The figure of the filidh or the bardd, with his long training, his role as the custodian of tradition, and his position of considerable social authority, is a recognizable descendant of the older Druidic figure.
The training of the Druids, is a striking example of the importance that the Celtic peoples attached to learning, to memory, and to the transmission of tradition. The investment of twenty years of an individual’s life, supported by the resources of the community, in the formal study of theology, philosophy, law, and the natural world, is a measure of the central role that the Druids played in the life of their societies, and of the respect in which they were held. The legacy of that training, in the medieval bardic and monastic traditions of the Celtic-speaking regions, has been a significant factor in the survival of the older Celtic learning into the present, and it remains one of the most distinctive features of the cultural heritage of the Celtic world.