Religion is the form behind which the Celtic races disguise their love
of the ideal, but it would be a mistake to imagine that religion is
to them a tie or a servitude. No race has a greater independence of
sentiment in religion. It was not until the twelfth century, and owing
to the support which the Normans of France gave to the See of Rome,
that Breton Christianity was unmistakably brought into the current of
Catholicism. It would have taken very little for the Bretons of France
to have become Protestant like their brethren the Welsh in England.
In the seventeenth century French Brittany was completely permeated by
Jesuitical customs and by the modes of piety common to the rest of the
world. Up to that time the religion of the country had had features of
its own, its special characteristic being the worship of saints. Among
the many peculiarities for which Brittany is noteworthy, its local
hagiography is assuredly the most remarkable. Going through the
country on foot there is one thing which immediately strikes the
observer. The parish churches, in which the Sunday services are
held, do not differ in the main from those of other countries. But in
country districts it is no uncommon thing to find as many as ten or
fifteen chapels in a single parish, most of them little huts with a
single door and window, and dedicated to some saint unknown to the
rest of Christendom. These local saints, who are to be counted by the
hundred, all date from the fifth or the sixth century; that is to say
from the period of the emigration.
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