The Mistery of Belicena Villca two combatant armies they ceased fighting immediately , and the combatants submitted to their arbitration .
As previously stated , in the opinion of the writers of the antiquity , the druidic doctrine was unwritten , transmitted orally , and novices were obliged to study for twenty years to possess the science . It seems , however , that this assertion is wrong , and that the error comes from the care with which the druids concealed their science from the profane . With age the memory inevitably weakens , and if nothing else had been written , it would have to result , necessarily , that the bosses , that is , the oldest , would be inferior to the youngest in the details of their doctrine . The druids had a sacred writing that , according to tradition , was called Ogham . It is thus probable that they had written books with those characters , which perhaps were , as indicated above , Greek characters , but this does not mean , as some have believed , that they wrote in Greek . Unfortunately none of those books have reached the present time . Those who escaped the edicts of the Roman emperors in Gaul and Brittany were destroyed by the early Christian propagandists , by Saint Patrick in Ireland and Saint Columba in Scotland .
The corp of the druids was divided into several classes : the druids themselves , the diviners , the saronids , the semnotes , the silodurs and bards . Regarding the latter , some authors think they should not to be listed among the druids , and others claim that the bards were a corporation of ministers dedicated to religious worship , which preceded the order or corporation of the druids . The bards , the same as the skalds of the Germans , were but poets attached to the chiefs , and who were in charge of singing the great deeds of heroes , of improvising praise and eulogies , funeral prayers and war songs . Did they also celebrate the mysteries of their religion as did the skalds ? This is a question that cannot be answered , because among the songs of the bards that have been preserved there isn ' t any that contains nothing relative to dogmas or ceremonies of any religion . Divination was the common attribute of the druids , they were all soothsayers , and there is no reason to divide them into classes , under this aspect , except for the exercise of the different functions they performed . The semnotes , word derived from sainch ( ecstasy ) were the ecstatic or contemplators ; the silodurs were the instructors or institutors , and took their name from the word realadh , which means teaching , and finally the saronids must have not formed a special class , but the chiefs should have been called like that , since the name saronids is derived from sar-navidh or sar-nidh , which means very venerable ; therefore , it ' s to be believed that saronid was a title and not a new class in the druidic order .
There were also druidesses , sometimes the women or daughters of the druids , or simply addons to the corporation , for it is not possible to admit that the druids allowed the exercise of magic , divination and priesthood to women who did not belong to the druidic body and weren ' t subjected to its discipline . And it is undoubted that there were , because History speaks of vestal Gauls of the Isle of Sen , seers and magicians . Those who predicted to Aurelius and Diocletian that they would be emperors , and to Severus Alexander his dire fate , were druidesses . An inscription found in Metz gives the name druidess to the priestess Avete ( Druis antistisa ).
In Thierry ' s opinion , druidism was already in decline before the time of Caesar . For some time , the nobles for a part and the people on the other , jealous of the great power of the druids , managed to gradually reduce their political influence .
Reynaud , one of the writers who have best studied druidism , argues that the ancient druids were the first to teach with great clarity the doctrine of the immortality of the soul , and that they had such a perfect conception of the true nature of God , like the Jews themselves . If they later tolerated the cults of other divinities , it was in order to reconcile druidism with the ideas professed by the uneducated classes most willing to believe in demigods and divinities than to conceive a single God . According to Reynaud , druidism declined and finally disappeared , because it lacked an element of life necessary in every religion : love or charity . Christianity gave that element and druidism disappeared ; but it disappeared after having accomplished an important mission : the conservation in a part of Europe of the idea of the unity of God . If this theory , supported by very incomplete data , or in more or less correct reasonings to prove among the Gauls certain ideas about the true nature of God and his relations with man , which later degenerated into vulgar superstition , is true or not , is a question that should not be discussed here .
Chapter XVIII As you can imagine , neffe Arturo , just now , when reading Belicena Villca ' s letter , I have managed to understand that reference made by Konrad Tarstein to that his family constituted the " German
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