M. Fustel de Coulanges[93] has argued with great force that the statement of Cæsar that the Druids were accustomed to settle controversies whether _de hereditate_ or _de finibus_ implies that in his view there must have been something like private property whether of individuals or of families.
[Sidenote: The evidence of Cæsar on tribal landholding.]
Now if a connection may be traced between the liability of the whole kindred for wergeld and the occupation of land by kindreds, with lesser divisions into something like _gwelys_, then, without pressing the point too far, without suggesting that the Welsh or the Irish form of tribal occupation of land may have been exactly that which in Cæsar’s time prevailed in Gaul, we may at least say that the analogy of the Welsh and Irish examples would lead us, from a tribal point of view, to judge that the form of land occupation in Gaul was not likely to be either absolute individual or absolute communal ownership. And as under Welsh and Irish tribal custom and forms of land occupation there was plenty of room for public and private controversies both _de hereditate_ and _de finibus_, it may fairly be suggested that some form of tribal land occupation would at least be more consistent with what Cæsar recorded in the few sentences under review than either complete individual or complete communal ownership would be.
But, passing from the passages already quoted to Cæsar’s further statements relating to the Druids, light seems to pour from them into another matter otherwise very difficult to realise.
It is at first sight with something like amazement that we view the arrogance of the pretension of the missionary priests of the Christian Church to impose what must have been galling penances upon chieftains and tribesmen who had committed crimes of murder or incest. Still more surprised might we well be that they had any chance of securing obedience.
The evidence of Gildas and of the Cadoc records quoted in a former volume is sufficient to show that to a most astonishing extent even chieftains submitted to the penalties and penances imposed by priests and monks who were claiming for themselves immunity from secular services and payments. The very fact that the Ecclesiastical Canons contain the rules we have examined as to the payments for homicide by the kindred of the murderer seems to involve the bold claim of the Church to bring the punishment of crime within its jurisdiction. We have seen also how in these Canons the right of the bishop to be placed in social rank on a level with the highest chieftains and princes and kings was already taken for granted in the corner of Gaul so closely connected with South Wales and Ireland.