Note (return) — Chapter XIX

For the British Celts the evidence is slender, but idolatry in the sense of "image-worship" is frequently mentioned in the lives of early saints.982 Gildas also speaks of images "mouldering away within and without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features."983 This pathetic picture of the forsaken shrines of forgotten gods may refer to Romano-Celtic images, but the "stiff and deformed features" suggest rather native art, the art of a people unskilful at reproducing the human form, however artistic they may have been in other directions.