The origins of Christianity in what became the kingdom of Alba are extremely complex. They incorporate a wide range of influences, which produced a Church that has points in common with several neighbouring churches but which nevertheless remains distinct. The Irish influence, as in the sphere of secular society, is, however, almost certainly the strongest one. The Irish tradition was based around the expansion of a single monastic church dedicated to a particular saint, through the foundation of daughter churches. The result was a familia or family of such daughter houses spread over a wide area, including into other kingdoms. The most famous of these churches in Alba was of course St Columba’s monastery on Iona, whose daughter houses were spread across Alba and throughout Ireland too. In Alba this pattern was followed by other important churches, including the bishoprics of Brechin, Dunkeld and St Andrews, and the earliest diocesan structures revealed in the twelfth century preserve evidence of such origins. They consist of a pattern of scattered dependent churches spread across the kingdom under the authority of a head church. The diocese of Dunkeld, for example, has a central block of territory in Atholl but outliers scattered throughout Angus, Fife and Lothian (see Map 4). The diocese of St Andrews stretches along the east coast from Aberdeen in the north to the English border in the south but is interspersed with small areas belonging to Brechin and Dunkeld. In contemporary England, by contrast, bishoprics were made up of compact uniform territorial units. In Ireland these families of churches were often supervised by the abbot of the original or head monastery.
The Church in Alba also included British and Northumbrian influences as a result of British missionaries like St Ninian and the introduction of Northumbrian traditions under Nechtan, King of the Picts, from 711 onwards. The main impact of these other traditions appears to have been the greater prominence of bishops in Alba than in Ireland. In Alba each familia or family of churches appears to have been supervised not by an abbot but by a bishop, although one individual might hold both titles. This complex background resulted in a number of dioceses, although we only have secure contemporary evidence for one or two. They each consisted of a head church, which controlled a group of widely scattered individual churches. The head church provided the residence for the bishop who supervised the other churches, including the monasteries under their individual abbots. The existence of an individual, variously known as ardescop or prim-escop, i.e. ‘senior Bishop’, or simply as ‘the Bishop of Alba’ suggests the existence of a recognised head of the Church. This appears to be the case in spite of the lack of any officially recognised metropolitan archbishop in the kingdom at this time. It also supports the existence of other bishops who presumably owed him obedience
This senior bishop or bishop of Alba was based in the most important head church in Alba. In 865 the Annals of Ulster report the death of Tuathal, son of Artgus, senior Bishop of Alba and Abbot of Dunkeld. In around 849 the Scottish Chronicle had reported the transfer of the relics of St Columba to Dunkeld by Kenneth I. This act transformed the church at Dunkeld into the most important church in Alba and naturally into its head church and the residence of the senior bishop. In the next fifty years the situation changed as St Andrews became increasingly important and gradually usurped the position of head church. It was St Columba’s crozier that was still carried before the Scottish army in 904 and 918, but it was Bishop Cellach of St Andrews who dealt with Constantine II at Scone in 906. In 943 Constantine II chose to retire to the monastery at St Andrews rather than Dunkeld. In the 950s King Idulf exiled Fothad, Bishop of St Andrews and not Dunkeld to the Isles. Thereafter there are a number of references to a senior bishop or bishop of Alba and all associated with St Andrews. It appears that St Andrews had replaced Dunkeld as the head church of Alba towards the end of the ninth century and, from then on, the senior bishop or bishop of Alba would be identical to the bishop of St Andrews. In the eleventh century, Maelduin and Fothad, two senior bishops of Alba mentioned in Irish annals, are firmly associated with St Andrews.
In the Church hierarchy, immediately below the bishops were the abbots or heads of individual monasteries. A number of abbots feature in the scarce records that survive about the kingdom of Alba. In the early ninth century, an unbroken succession of abbots of Iona were among the most important clerics in the Gaelic world. The Viking assaults hit Iona hard and led Abbot Cellach to build a refuge at Kells in Ireland in 814. Thereafter the abbots of Iona who feature in the annals were probably infrequent visitors to that island. They were probably resident in Ireland although they still attempted to travel around their extensive familia of churches across Ireland and northern Britain. They visited the kingdom of Alba in 818, 829, 849 and 865 but although abbots of Iona are mentioned in 880 and 891 it seems unlikely that these last men visited Alba, let alone Iona itself. There are also references from 865, 873, 965 and 1045 to abbots of Dunkeld. The Life of St Cadroe of Metz also features Abbot Maelrodair, probably of the monastery of St Brigit at Abernethy, who was an adviser to Constantine II. There were other monasteries, including Deer and Loch Leven, which were the recipients of grants of lands and dues. Unfortunately, few of these monasteries are more than names and no information has survived about their abbots.
If there is little information about the abbots, there is almost none about the ordinary priests who formed the backbone of the Church at this time. The priest Bean who sponsored St Cadroe was described as vigilant in prayers and devoted to works of charity, but this description is largely conventional and hardly informative. It is far more interesting that Cadroe himself was educated in the Irish schools of Armagh, although it is made clear that few priests were so well educated at the time. Cadroe’s studies apparently included Plato, philosophy, poetry and astronomy and on his return he taught others. This high standard of education is enough to explain his later welcome at Metz.
The monasteries and churches of Alba were maintained through grants of land and donations of goods and wealth, often in kind. The Register of St Andrews Priory preserves in Latin translation some eleventh-century notitiae or ‘notes’ of grants made to St Serf’s monastery at Loch Leven in Fife. They were copied into the register from ‘an old volume written in the ancient idiom of the Scots’, i.e. Gaelic, which arrived at St Andrews when the latter assumed control of Loch Leven in the twelfth century. They include a series of records of grants of land and churches and confirmations of these by three bishops of St Andrews and four kings, including Macbeth and his wife Gruoch and Malcolm III and his wife Margaret. The Book of Deer preserves some original Gaelic notitiae from this same period. They record the donations made to St Drostan of Deer by a wide range of people including King Malcolm II, Maelsnechtai, Mormaer of Moray and Muiredach, son of Morgann, who was possibly Mormaer of Buchan. It is perhaps worth considering the generous donations of a single individual Cathal, son of Morgann, perhaps a brother of the mormaer:
Cathal son of Morgann gave Achad na Cleirich or ‘The Field of the Clerics’ to Drostan . . . Cathal ‘quenched’ his toiseach’s dues on the same terms [in return for giving him his goodwill], and gave a banquet for a hundred every Christmas and every Easter to God and to Drostan. Cainneach son of MacDobarchon and Cathal gave Altrie from the cliff of the birch of the river bend as far as the birch between the two Altries. Domnall and Cathal gave Ednie to God and to Drostan. Cainneach and Domnall and Cathal ‘quenched’ all the grants in favour of God and Drostan from beginning to end free from mormaer and toiseach till Doomsday and the blessing of the Lord on every mormaer and on every toiseach who shall comply with it and to their descendants after them.4
It was this wealth that enabled the churches to maintain their ability to serve the wider community and to meet their many needs for spiritual and other services.
The relationship between the kings and the Church was considered vital to the well-being of the wider kingdom. The majority of the kings were therefore keen to associate themselves with the Church. In 849 Kenneth I brought the relics of St Columba to Dunkeld in order to assoc
iate this key saint with this church and the new kingdom of the Picts and Scots. In 904 and 918 Constantine II carried St Columba’s crozier before his army into crucial battles against the heathen Vikings. In 906 Constantine II cemented relations with the Church with a covenant agreed on the Hill of Faith at Scone. In the early 970s Kenneth II founded or expanded a monastery at Brechin. The strong Christian iconography featured on contemporary sculpture is an important reflection of this. The Dupplin Cross which was erected to commemorate Constantine, son of Fergus proclaims the Christianity of the king and is accompanied by pictures of King David, the biblical king par excellence. The unknown but clearly significant figure who commissioned Sueno’s Stone to commemorate an important military victory, was also eager to proclaim his Christianity, and a huge cross covers almost the whole of the opposite face. The relationship between the kings and the Church was therefore close throughout this period. This does not mean, however, that the relationship was entirely uncritical. There were also disputes between the secular and religious authorities. King Idulf had Bishop Fothad exiled to the Isles in the 950s for most of his reign.
The Church played an important role in the society of Alba at this time. It offered an explanation for the state of things in what was a very confusing and frightening world. It provided spiritual solace and uplift through prayer and eventually secured passage into a better world after death. The popularity of Christianity and the cults of its saints appears amply demonstrated by the number of personal names containing the Gaelic elements Mael or Gille meaning ‘servant’ combined with the name of Christ or one of his saints. The saints include Brigit, Columba, Michael, Peter and the Virgin Mary. The role of the clergy in this period was to offer prayers for the souls of the dead and for the health and welfare of the living. The significance of the salvation of souls is clear from the frequent references to this. The earliest Scottish charters to Durham include provision for prayers for the souls of dead relatives and for the bodies and souls of the living. The personal gospel owned by Queen Margaret includes a poem about how the book was lost and found again which ends with a blessing:
May the king be saved forever, and his holy queen,
Whose book from out of the river was rescued only now
and great glory be to God, the saviour of this self-same book.5
The notitiae in The Book of Deer request the blessing of the Lord not only for its benefactors but also for all those who comply with their donations. The scribe of the gospel text itself ends with a request to ‘everyone who uses this splendid little book, that they say a blessing for the soul of the wretch who wrote it’.
In relation to the world of the living, The Life of St Cadroe reports that Fochertach and his wife prayed at the shrine of St Columba in Dunkeld for a son and were subsequently blessed with two, including the saint himself. The Book of Deer attributes the foundation of the monastery to the miraculous healing of the son of the local mormaer, and the gospels themselves were probably used as a holy relic to heal the sick since they incorporate a Latin mass for the sick: ‘The body with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ be health to you for perpetual life and salvation.’ They almost certainly also had an important role in almost every rite of passage in the life of every individual and community, baptism, marriage and death. The notitiae in The Book of Deer, quoted above, mention that Cathal provided feasts for 100 people at Christmas and Easter which had a charitable purpose. The Life of St Margaret sets out elaborate rituals for these important festivals, including the feeding of 300 paupers at the royal Court, a larger scale of generosity appropriate to the king.
The Church offered intercession with important saints whose holiness placed them close to Christ and to God himself. They could therefore form a conduit for prayers and admonitions for all sorts of reasons. There were several categories of saints, headed by Columba and Andrew who competed for seniority during this period. The start of the period shows Columba in highest favour with the early kings, including Kenneth I, who brought his relics to Dunkeld. The name Malcolm or Mael Coluim, which means ‘servant of Columba’, was held by several kings. In 865 the Bishop of Alba was also Abbot of Dunkeld. In 904 Constantine II called on Columba’s aid in his contest with the heathen Vikings. In the later period Andrew appears to become more important perhaps from the time of Constantine II who retired to the monastery of St Andrews at Kinrimont in Fife. The later bishops of Alba were usually associated with St Andrews. There were also more local saints – Drostan at Deer, Serf at Loch Leven – with local churches dedicated to them. They had an important role in encouraging attendance at church, attracting pilgrims and in securing grants and donations towards the upkeep of their churches. The Life of St Margaret speaks of the crowds of religious people or pilgrims drawn to St Andrews, which were sufficient to warrant the provision of a regular ferry service to take them across the Forth at Queensferry.
The Church also offered things other than spiritual succour and health and welfare services, including administrative services based on the literacy of its priests in Gaelic or Latin. They produced Latin gospel books which formed the basis for worship, including The Book of Deer, Queen Margaret’s Gospels and others now lost. They were also responsible for preserving the records of their society. These included king-lists, genealogies, annals, chronicles, records of grants and laws and poems. The few written records which actually survive from this period and which provide all our information about it were almost certainly maintained by clerics. The same men were probably also responsible for the transmission of reports about events in Alba to the wider world in Ireland, England and on the Continent. In this way the Church of Alba managed to preserve every scrap of information about the kingdom that survives to this day.
The Church in Alba has often been considered moribund during this period. It is difficult to know, however, if this impression, which is based on fairly limited evidence, is well-founded or not. The main source is The Life of St Margaret, which has a vested interest in portraying the Church in this way. The author of this work was clearly determined to portray his heroine as the saviour of the Scottish Church. He therefore had an incentive to exaggerate the faults of that organisation and to minimise its successes. In fact, he reports that ‘she saw many things in Scotland were done contrary to the rule of faith and the holy custom of the universal church.’ This statement, however, suggests that the failings of the Church in Alba amounted to no more than the preservation of ancient traditions that had been discarded elsewhere in Europe. The ‘false customs’ that Margaret sought to reform were exactly of this kind. They related to different observance of the Lenten fast, failure to take communion at Easter, different practices for celebrating the mass and neglect of Sabbath observance. The faults were regarded as serious by Margaret and other reformers, but were a sign of the isolation and conservatism of the Church rather than any fundamental decline. There is no mention of major faults within the Church itself, for example clerical celibacy, simony, vagrancy and other abuses of clerical life. This does not indicate a decadent or moribund Church and nothing in Margaret’s reforms suggests this was the case.
If The Life of St Margaret is discounted, the suggestion that the Church of Alba was moribund seems to depend on a lack of evidence. There are few literary or other written records of any kind which survive from this period. There are similarly few architectural or monumental survivals. This does not prove, however, that such never existed in the first place. It is always dangerous to build arguments from a lack of data. Indeed, the zeal of the twelfth-century reformers who transformed the Church under King David I was itself responsible for most of the losses. They were so enamoured with their improvements that they disposed of old texts, buildings and monuments without a second thought. The evidence that remains about the early Church is therefore sketchy at best, and for that reason must be used with caution in any arguments. For example, a great deal has been made of the poor standard of the illuminations in The Book of Deer compared to the spectacular imag
es in the earlier Book of Kells. This is hardly fair since both are individual works of art produced in completely different circumstances. It is simply not possible to judge whether either is representative of the rest of their kind. It is possible that other works produced at the time of The Book of Deer were fully equal to The Book of Kells. What can actually be argued from the limited evidence available?
A great deal of attention has focused on the few pieces of negative evidence which it is claimed proves the poor state of the Church in Alba. The focus has been on the supposed secularisation of church offices. This was an intermittent problem for all churches in the early medieval period and later. The hierarchy of the Church was after all recruited from the secular nobility and this brought a constant danger that family interest might conflict with the interests of the Church. St Cadroe was a member of the nobility, who had trained for war and been expected to inherit the family land before he became a priest. He proved able to put the interests of the Church before those of family, although not without conflict, but others were not. The detractors of the Church point to a vacancy in the succession to the bishopric of St Andrews towards the end of the eleventh century but there were similar vacancies in other countries too. There are perhaps more solid grounds for concern about the apparent secularisation of the abbots of Dunkeld. In 865 and 873 there are records of abbots who appear to be standard religious figures, but in 965 the Scottish Chronicle reports that Abbot Duncan perished in the Battle of Duncrub. The chronicler makes no remark about his presence or involvement. He may simply have been there to offer moral support but even if he had been involved in the fighting this would not necessarily have been out of place at the time. In Ireland abbots regularly participated in battles, some of which were conflicts between monastic communities. In the eleventh century, another abbot of Dunkeld, Crinan married a woman called Bethoc and their son became King Duncan I. He was later killed in battle at Dunkeld in 1045, possibly protecting his grandsons from Macbeth. He also is not an unusual figure for this period, either as a nobleman of Alba or as a church official in north-west Europe, but by the next century his lifestyle would be viewed as increasingly unnacceptable amid the new reforms. The general picture of the Church of Alba is not perfect by any means, but neither is it at variance with contemporary evidence from elsewhere, including Ireland and England.
Lords of Alba Page 6