Terracotta relief of the Matres, from Bibracte, city of the Aedui in Gaul

The Matres or Matronae (Latin for “important mothers/ladies”) were ancient deities venerated in northwestern Europe from the 1st to the 5th century AD. They appear in votive reliefs and inscriptions in southeast Gaul, as at Bibracte (illustration, right), and also in the Romano-Celtic culture of Pannonia, in the form of similar reliefs and inscriptions to Nutrices Augustae, “the august Nurses” found in Roman sites of Ptuj, Lower Styria.

Matronae were representations of motherhood, often displayed with fertility symbols such as baskets or cornucopias of fruit and bread, or babies. They are usually depicted wearing long garments with one breast bared. Locally they may have been associated with other spheres of influence besides fertility and motherhood. The line between the rather “generic” Mother Goddess(es) and more specific local or insular goddesses such as those just mentioned is quite blurry, and the ancient Celts had a tendency to adapt the nature or sphere of a deity to differing local traditions. In some depictions they are different ages (Robert Graves among others have popularized the idea that girl, matron and crone is the common or default configuration), but in fact depictions of three mothers are much more common.

Worship of the Matres was especially widespread in Celtic regions, with sculptural finds and inscriptions to them having been discovered in Britannia, Gaul, Germania, northern Italy and Celtiberian northern Spain. Just as the cultus had a wide range of adherents, so were the identities of the Matronae widespread. They differed widely from place to place, with a great many names, some of them expressing their patronage of a locality: Deae Matres (or Matrones), the Suleviae, Alaferhuiae, Aufaniae, Cartovallensiae, Rumaneheihae, Domesticae, Comedovae, Vatviae, and many others. In Glanum, Provence they were called the Glanicae. Their number was most likely influenced by the Celtic tradition of triplism, which deemed the number three to be particularly auspicious. There are numerous singular matronly goddesses of Northern Europe as well, many difficult to distinguish from their related triplicate variety (from whom they may often derive, or vice-versa), while the triadic version are clearly cognate with the Greek Fates and Roman Furies, and the Nordic Norns or Weird Sisters, and survive in caricatured form into relatively modern times as the Three Witches of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The concept of the Triple Goddess remains important in Neo-Paganism.

Notes

  1. ^ K. Wigand, “Die Nutrices Augustae von Poeticio” Jahreshrift Österreiches Archäologisches Institut 18 (1915), pp 118-218, illus., noted by Susan Scheinberg, “The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 83 (1979), p 2.
  2. ^ Martin Henig and Paul Cannon, “A Sceptre-Head for the Matres Cult and Other Objects from West Berkshire” Britannia 31 (2000:358-362); a first-century Roman altar unearthed in Micklegate, York, was communicated to the Royal Society in 1753-54 (Francis Drake and John Ward, “An Account of a Roman Altar, with an Inscription upon It…” Philosophical Transactions 48, (1753-54:33-41), at JSTOR.

See also

  • Triple Goddess
  • Dea Matrona (Matrona)
  • Triple deities
  • Nehalennia

External links

  • Livius.org: Matres

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