The Sulis Minerva Temple
A temple the size of a football stadium was made 2000 years ago. This famous Roman temple (known for its amazing healing powers) is the Sulis Minerva temple in Somerset.
The Sulis Minerva temple rose to fame when people started to realise that the temple has healing powers. Though they associated this with superstitions of the time and did not know the science behind it, they would travel to Somerset to experience the divinity and rid themselves from their illnesses. They believed that if it cannot be cured in the Sulis Minerva temple it cannot be cured anywhere. To travel across half the world by boat to cure a disease at a temple you have only heard of, the temple must have been pretty promising.
Being the only hot water spring in Britain, it was a luxury they wouldn’t access as often as we nowadays would (all those who ‘forget’ to have baths not included). The generally cold weather of Britain was made more bearable by the spas you get at the temple’s bath. Though only the rich and powerful could afford slaves to watch over their clothes and scrape the grease and dirt off of them, it was open to public use.
The temple bath was not only a place to clean and heal yourself but, it was also a place to socialise and make acquaintances. The Romans loved talking and socialising and they made bathing a way of doing so.
The Sulis Minerva deity is actually a fusion of the identities of two goddesses. One Celtic and one Roman. Sulis was a Celtic goddess known for healing powers. When the Romans came in, they identified their goddess Minerva Medica with Sulis as both of them shared a lot of common properties and characteristics. As the Celts had not given Sulis a human form, Sulis Minerva took up the form of Minerva Medica and the Sulis Minerva temple is a place where both the ruler and the ruled prayed side by side.
-By Anagha Arun Varma
Newstead Wood School
