Clan Ogma

There are two factors that need establishing. Firstly, were the charges against Pelagius justified or merely vindictive? Secondly, if he really was espousing Druid thought, is it possible to disentangle the Pagan elements from the Christian?

If he had been born in 4th century Britain, several centuries after the attack on Inis Mon, he is unlikely to have met too many Druids ~ though he almost certainly would have been exposed to Romano-Celtic Paganism, which had absorbed much Druidic thought. If he was of Irish birth, he had a very high chance of encountering Druids and their lay followers.

Pelagius was accused by a whole host of bishops, and found guilty by Pope Innocent I, who declared him heretical in 411ce, just as the Roman Empire was falling to the Visigoths and withdrawing from Britain. Bishop (later Saint) Augustine of Hippo was a prime mover in the discrediting of Pelagius and his followers. Indeed, not only did he manage to remove a rival, but Augustine’s own philosophies became the bedrock of Catholic doctrine ~ and still have a major influence upon many Protestant churches today, especially his doctrines of predetermination.

Whilst studying in Rome, Pelagius wrote several books, most of which have been lost or reduced to fragments. He went on to travel with a companion, Celestius, and spread their theories around Palestine, Africa, Carthage and elsewhere. He seems to have attracted notoriety wherever he went. His beliefs were viewed as so dangerous that, in 418, the Emperor Honorius banished all Pelagians from Italy. What became of Pelagius remains unknown, but his followers continued to be a thorn in Church flesh into the 6th century. The main centres of this belief were Britain (where Bishop Agricola was a leading exponent) and Gaul, also traditional strongholds of Druidry.

The Church in Pelagius’ day was awash with schisms. One of the biggest was the Donatist movement, which originated in Africa. Their major "blasphemy" was the belief (taken up by many later heretics) that transubstantiation (the turning of wine into blood & bread into flesh during Communion) would only happen if the priest performing the ritual was holy. Augustine, with the full backing of the Vatican, maintained that any ordained priest could successfully perform the rite, regardless of his holiness. If the Church accepted Donatist doctrine, then they would have had to sack so many corrupt and perverted priests that there would be have scarcely been enough left to run a jumble sale. It would also call into validity the rituals performed by them, and leave the congregations who had received Sacrament wondering if it still held... not to mention keeping other congregations on tenterhooks, wondering wether the priest before them would one day be exposed and his rituals questioned.

To Augustine, old Pelagius seemed to be going along much the same lines as the troublesome Donatists. The other main aspects of Pelagius’ preaching which gave the Church such as headache went as follows:

He was also a great exponent of Free Will, unlike the fatalist Augustine who felt that virtually everything was predetermined ~ including who could or could not be saved. For Pelagius choice was all important, with the implicit notion that we are responsible for our own destiny. Not for him the notion of a random Grace, doled out by God, but rather the belief that each man saves (or condemns) himself by his own actions. Though written quite some time after Pelagius, the Celtic myths certainly express a passionate love of the natural world, and it is easy to see that young Pelagius might have absorbed this belief from the oral myths in the rightness of the physical world ~ rejecting Augustine’s view of the flesh as evil. The notion that Pagans and even (shock, horror) Jews can be decent people and get into Heaven radically undermined the exclusive monopoly on Truth and Eternal Life that the Church sought to enforce. The basic notion that there is more than one Way does have a decidedly polytheist feel to it.

In Pelagius’ own words "it is not what you believe that matters; it is how you respond with your heart and your actions. It is not believing in Christ that matters; it is becoming like him." The emphasis on deed over thought comes through in much of the Brehon law, where paying compensation to the victim is more important than repentance or mental rehabilitation.

The perception of death as perfectly natural, rather than as some sort of Divine punishment for wickedness, sits well with the benevolent portrayal of the Gods of the dead in Celtic myth.

The Romans and Egyptians reverenced their leaders as divine, and Christians reverence Jesus as a living god. There is no evidence in Celtic myth or commentary that they had god-kings or deified humans of any other sort. Indeed, one Gaulish chieftain was said to have scoffed in bemusement that the Greeks should carve statues of their Gods in human guise. Did this attitude lead Pelagius to regard Jesus not as Divine Saviour, but rather as a good example to follow? It may have been a Celtic doctrine to reject the very notion of a deity in human guise (think how the Trinovantes reacted to the Temple of Claudius.) Even those mythic figures who were accredited as the children of Gods, such as Cuchulainn, were not themselves worshipped or regarded as anything more than magnificently heroic ancestors.

Would a Christian embrace so much of Druid belief? Let us not forget that Druids were held in such high regard by some Christians that St Columba referred to Jesus as his Arch-Druid. If Columba had viewed Druids as wicked virgin-sacrificing old monsters, he would scarcely have applied that cognomen to his Saviour.