CULDEES
A Christian monastic movement in Ireland and Scotland, the Culdees (from Gaelic celi De, “servant of God”) emerged in the seventh and eighth centuries within the Celtic Church. They adopted some elements of the Eastern Orthodox rite and lived a life of prayer and austerity in isolated hermitages. Their variations from the standard Roman Catholic practice of the time led them to be condemned as heretics once Roman authority extended to the Celtic fringe of northwest Europe, and the Culdees were gradually absorbed into more orthodox monastic traditions in the tenth and eleventh centuries. See Roman Catholic Church.
Very few traditions of the past have had their reputation as roughly manhandled as the Culdees. Starting in the nineteenth century, Druid Revival secret societies, which claimed connections back to the ancient Druids, redefined the Culdees as a group of Druids who nominally converted to Christianity but preserved their ancient mysteries. The neo-pagan movement of the late twentieth century borrowed this re-definition and mapped their own ideas of paganism onto it, resulting in claims that the Culdees worshipped the earth goddess and practiced free love. The reaction of the ascetic and rather puritanical Culdees themselves to this suggestion scarcely bears imagining. See Druid Revival.
SOURCE:
The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies : the ultimate a-z of ancient mysteries, lost civilizations and forgotten wisdom written by John Michael Greer – © John Michael Greer 2006