10/10/2025
Before Ireland ever faced missionaries or kings who abandoned the native traditions, the old spiritual systems of Europe were already under attack.
Across much of Europe, people lived within animism; the belief that the world itself is alive with spirit. Rivers, groves, stones, and ancestors were not “things” but presences, powers woven into daily life. Sacred wells were honoured with offerings, burial mounds kept the link with the dead, and festivals followed the turning of the seasons to maintain balance between people and the land.
Then came Rome.
The Roman Empire advanced westward with armies, roads, taxation, and propaganda. Its worldview was the opposite of animism. Rome worshipped distant sky gods (by this stage mainly a Greek-style pantheon and state cult, very different from its older animistic roots) and emperors declared divine. The land was no longer sacred; it was territory to be divided, taxed, and owned. Empires had risen before, but Rome was the first to reach so deep into Celtic Europe, directly dismantling indigenous traditions.
To justify conquest, Roman writers portrayed the peoples of Gaul and Britain as half-animal, savage, and unfit for civilisation. This excused seizing ancestral land, cutting down sacred groves, and enslaving entire communities.
One of the most infamous assaults came in 61 CE on Anglesey (Ynys Môn in Wales), a stronghold of the Druids. The Romans massacred the Druids and destroyed the sacred groves. This was not simply a military strike.. it was a deliberate attack on spiritual authority and cultural memory.
Across Gaul, Iberia, and Britain, sacred sites were destroyed or rededicated. Temples to Roman gods such as Jupiter and Minerva replaced local shrines. Wells were claimed, groves were felled, and altars rebuilt in the imperial style. Rome’s strategy was not to demonise native spirits at first, but to subordinate them; to fold them into its system, or erase them when they resisted.
The outright demonisation came later, under Christianity.
By the 4th century, Christianity had become Rome’s official faith. This was no coincidence. Christianity offered a simpler and more powerful tool of control: one god, one book, one truth. It condemned native traditions, demanded obedience, and united vast lands under a single system. Seasonal festivals were repackaged as Christian feasts of saints and biblical stories, overlaying and replacing indigenous meaning.
This was the beginning of a long campaign: to sever native peoples from the land, erase ancestral memory, and replace sovereignty with obedience to empire.
Ireland itself was never conquered by Rome. Yet the same pressures soon reached our shores; through missionaries, corrupted kings, and the slow replacement of native spirit and law with foreign systems.
Of course, this is only a broad overview in a complex subject. The full history would take years to uncover, but I hope this gives a starting point to encourage reflection and discussion.
In the next post, we will turn directly to Ireland, to see how figures like Patrick and the High Kings opened the door to this new religion, pushing the old ways further into the shadows.
