Roman Britain by Shotter David;

Author:Shotter, David;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2004-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

6

RELIGION IN ROMANO–BRITISH SOCIETY

We have seen that through the shared work of administration and through the economics of supply and demand, a successful and integrated Romano–British society emerged. A powerful bonding-force to this society was provided by the wide variety of religious rituals practised within the province. Although in a few cases – most notably Christianity – the Roman state found itself at odds with a religious cult of provincial origin, the Romans were in general tolerant of the religious practices which they encountered in the empire, evidently believing that people were best left free to continue to seek the protection of their traditional gods.

Religious practices in Roman Britain fall into a number of groups. First, there were cults, such as Emperor-worship and the cult of Jupiter, the observance of which were effectively obligatory on Romanised communities as acts of loyalty. Second, the gods of the traditional Olympian pantheon, which consisted of deities with distinctive protective functions, were occasionally worshipped alone or, through the process of interpretatio Romana, in conjunction with their closest equivalents in the Celtic pantheons. Third, the cosmopolitan nature of Romano–British society saw the introduction of a wide range of so-called ‘mystery’ cults from various parts of the empire; these may have had a temporary political or social relevance, and generally appealed to rather restricted groups of people. Fourth, we should consider as a separate issue the progress of Christianity in Roman Britain. Whilst this, in a number of ways, resembled the mystery cults, its most obvious distinction was that, whilst they were mostly tolerated by the authorities, it was not – until the early fourth century.

In the early imperial period, at least, ruler-worship was not officially countenanced in the west, although it was a natural feature of the culture of the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the east; there, from Augustus’ time, emperors were hailed as gods and equated with various of the Olympians. In the west, although a few individual emperors may have had pretensions to personal divinity, the ‘imperial cult’ stopped short of such claims, and directed attention instead to the ‘guardian spirit’ (genius or numen) of emperors. The observance of this was officially required, although it was in reality as much a political as a religious act – a statement of loyalty.

Units of the Roman army took an oath of allegiance to the emperor, which was renewed annually; each year fresh altars were inscribed affirming their continuing loyalty, and set up within military sites. Communities of Roman citizens had an obligation similar to that of the army, and individuals often had statuettes of emperors which they placed on their household altars. Provinces had imperial-cult centres; altars, for example, stood at Lyons (Lugdunum) and Cologne (Colonia Agrippinensis). In Britain, the details of the development of the centre for the Imperial Cult at Colchester, initially the administrative ‘capital’ for the province, are less clear: although the impression is given by Tacitus that the centre consisted from an early date of an elaborate classical temple dedicated to ‘Claudius

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