Celtic images existed in Gaul. The Gauls,
who used nothing but wood for their houses, probably knew little of the
art of carving stone. They would therefore make most of their images of
wood--a perishable material. The insular Celts had images, and if, as
Caesar maintained, the Druids came from Britain to Gaul, this points at
least to a similarity of cult in the two regions. Youthful Gauls who
aspired to Druidic knowledge went to Britain to obtain it. Would the
Druids of Gaul have permitted this, had they been iconoclasts? No single
text shows that the Druids had any antipathy to images, while the Gauls
certainly had images of worshipful animals. Further, even if the Druids
were priests of a pre-Celtic folk, they must have permitted the making
of images, since many "menhir-statues" exist on French soil, at Aveyron,
Tarn, and elsewhere.[985] The Celts were in constant contact with
image-worshipping peoples, and could hardly have failed to be influenced
by them, even if such a priestly prohibition existed, just as Israel
succumbed to images in spite of divine commands. That they would have
been thus influenced is seen from the number of images of all kinds
dating from the period after the Roman conquest.

Incidental proofs of the fondness of the Celts for images are found in
ecclesiastical writings and in late survivals. The procession of the
image of Berecynthia has already been described, and such processions
were common in Gaul, and imply a regular folk-custom. S. Martin of Tours
stopped a funeral procession believing it to be such a pagan rite.[986]
Councils and edicts prohibited these processions in Gaul, but a more
effectual way was to Christianise them. The Rogation tide processions
with crucifix and Madonna, and the carrying of S. John's image at the
Midsummer festivals, were a direct continuation of the older practices.
Images were often broken by Christian saints in Gaul, as they had been
over-turned by S. Patrick in Ireland. "Stiff and deformed" many of them
must have been, if one may judge from the _Groah-goard_ or "Venus of
Quinipily," for centuries the object of superstitious rites in
Brittany.[987] With it may be compared the fetich-stone or image of
which an old woman in the island of Inniskea, the guardian of a sacred
well, had charge. It was kept wrapped up to hide it from profane eyes,
but at certain periods it was brought out for adoration.[988]

The images and bas-reliefs of the Gallo-Roman period fa