Belenus

Belenus, Bel, Belenos, Belinos, Belinu, Bellinus, Belus [Gaul., bright (?)]. Continental Celtic god whose cult stretched from the Italian peninsula to the British Isles. A principal shrine was at Aquileia on the Adriatic, and his worship was also associated with health giving waters such as those at Aquae Borvonis (Bourbon-les-Bains, north-east France). His worship was also known in Aquitaine and what is now Austria. Several ancient commentators linked him with Apollo, and some modern commentators classify him only as an aspect of Apollo; a shrine of Belenus at Inveresk, Scotland, is inscribed ‘Apollini Granno’. The 19th-century attempt to link Belenus, under the spelling Bel, with the Phoenician Baal is now rejected. A tribal leader of pre-Roman Britain styled himself Cunobelinus or ‘Hound of Belenus’. Belenus apparently gives his name to Beli Mawr, a Welsh ancestor-deity, and may give his name to the fountain of Bérenton (formerly Belenton) at Brocéliande in Brittany. The celebrations for the calendar feast of Beltaine may or may not derive from the veneration of Belenus. In Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136), Belenus is reduced to a mere mortal conqueror. Fanciful folk etymology links Belenus with Billingsgate, near the Thames in London. See . J. Gourvest, ‘Le Culte de Belenos en Provence occidentale et en Gaule’, Ogam, 6 (1954), 257–62. See also BORVO.