Abstract
Historians investigating the state of the medieval Church in Gaelic Scotland have not had their problems to seek. Scholarship has been traditionally weighted towards the early medieval period, where the search for the elusive ‘Celtic’ brand of Christianity dwarfs anything published for the period after 1100. Late medievalists have tended to contrast the Church in the Gaelic Highlands unfavourably with the ecclesiastical organization and religious sophistication of Lowland society, and some have dismissed it as a little more than a superficial and extraneous appendage grafted onto society. In one especially dismissive passage Gordon Donaldson argued:
The facts provide but a slender foundation on which to build the romantic picture of a pious Catholic populace who maintained their faith uncontaminated by the reformation. The truth is that the Highlands never had adequate spiritual ministrations until the nineteenth century, when the Free Kirk took the task in hand.1
In recent years scholars have challenged the sharp dichotomy between the Highlands and Lowlands and the cultural homogeneity of the Gàidhealtachd itself, but in the ecclesiastical sphere certain distinguishing traits, chiefly around institutional provision and the sexual and religious mores of the clergy and laity, remain uncontested.2 This paper seeks to flesh out some of these issues and to examine the performance of the Church within the context of Gaelic society and wider Christendom.
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Notes
Gordon Donaldson, The Scottish Reformation (Cambridge, 1960), p. 26. The ‘Highland-Lowland’ approach is followed in James Kirk, ‘The Jacobean Church in the Highlands, 1567–1625’, in Inverness Field Club, The Seventeenth Century in the Highlands (Inverness, 1986), pp. 25–6, and in
Ian B. Cowan, The Medieval Church in Scotland, ed. James Kirk (Edinburgh, 1995), pp. 147–9, 152–3, although the latter is more constructive.
Aonghas MacCoinnich, ‘Where and How Was Gaelic Written in Late Medieval and Early Modern Scotland? Orthographic Practices and Cultural Identities’, Scottish Gaelic Studies 24 (2008); Wilson McLeod, Divided Gaels: Gaelic Cultural Identities in Scotland and Ireland c.1200–c.1650 (Oxford, 2004);
Dauvit Broun and Martin MacGregor (eds), Mìorun Mòr nan Gall, ‘The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander’? Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands, Medieval and Modern (Glasgow, 2009). Some of the issues were touched upon briefly in
Martin MacGregor, ‘Church and Culture in the Late Medieval Highlands’, in James Kirk (ed.), The Church in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 1998) pp. 4–5.
James Kirk, ‘The Kirk and the Highlands at the Reformation’, Northern Scotland 7 (1986), pp. 2–3; MacGregor, ‘Church and Culture’, p. 20.
James V., The Letters of James V, eds Robert Kerr Hannay and Denys Hay (Edinburgh, 1954), p. 162.
Ibid. For the political context, see Alison Cathcart, ‘James V, King of Scotland — and Ireland?’, in Seán Duffy (ed.), The World of the Galloglass: Kings, Warlords and Warriors in Ireland and Scotland, 1200–1600 (Dublin, 2007).
Mark Dilworth, ‘Iona Abbey and the Reformation’, Scottish Gaelic Studies 12 (1971–6), p. 89.
D. E. R. Watt and A. L. Murray (eds), Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae Medii Aevi Ad Annum 1638, Scottish Record Society, new series, 25 (Edinburgh, 2003).
Watt and Murray, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, p. 269; Dilworth, ‘Iona Abbey’, pp. 81–2, 89; University of Glasgow, Scottish History, Ross Fund collection of material from the Vatican Archives relating to Scotland, Registra Supplicationum, 2664, fol. 155v; 2667, fols 299r, 299v. For Iona’s extensive properties, see Janet C. MacDonald, ‘Iona’s Local Associations in Argyll and the Isles, c1203–c1575’ (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2010).
For a rudimentary map of early fifteenth-century parishes see Alexander Grant, ‘Franchises North of the Border: Baronies and Regalities in Medieval Scotland’, in Michael Prestwich (ed.), Liberties and Identities in the Medieval British Isles (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 162–3. My thanks to Janet MacDonald for this reference.
Thomas Owen Clancy, ‘Annat in Scotland and the Origins of the Parish’, IR 46 (1995), pp. 103–5;
P. J. Duffy, ‘The Shape of the Parish’, in Elizabeth Fitzpatrick and Raymond Gillespie (eds), The Parish in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland: Community, Territory and Building (Dublin, 2006).
Bishop Brown of Dunkeld (1483–1515) founded the new parish church of Dowally to cater for the burgeoning Gaelic populations in the parishes of Little Dunkeld and Caputh: Robert Kerr Hannay (ed.), Rentale Dunkeldense, Scottish History Society, second series, 10 (Edinburgh, 1915), p. 313.
Ian B. Cowan, The Parishes of Medieval Scotland, Scottish Record Society 93 (Edinburgh, 1967), pp. ii–iii;
A. D. M. Barrell, ‘The Church in the West Highlands in the Late Middle Ages’, IR 54.1 (2003), pp. 33–4.
Nicholas Orme, ‘The Other Parish Churches: Chapels in Late Medieval England’, in Clive Burgess and Eamon Duffy (eds), The Parish in Late Medieval England (Donington, 2006).
James Kirk, Roland J. Tanner and Annie I. Dunlop (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1447–1471 (Edinburgh, 1997), no. 1127; Charles Fraser-MacKintosh, Invernessiana: contributions toward a history of the town and parish of Inverness from 1160 to 1599 (Inverness, 1875), pp. 80–1, 122;
G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Badenoch and Strathspey, 1130–1312, 2: The Church’, Northern Scotland 9 (1989), pp. 9–10; HMC, Seventh Report (London, 1879) p. 710.
Iain G. MacDonald, Clergy and Clansmen: The Diocese of Argyll between the Twelfth and Sixteenth Centuries (Leiden, 2013), pp. 259–64.
Ibid.; David H. Caldwell, Islay: The Land of the Lordship (Edinburgh, 2008), p. 74; Rachel Butter, ‘The Lost Churches of Glassary Parish’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society 40 (2010);
A. D. Lacaille, ‘Notes on a Loch Lomondside Parish, IR 16 (1965), p. 151.
John Major, A History of Greater Britain, ed. Archibald Constable, Scottish History Society 10 (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 30.
MacGregor, ‘Church and Culture’, p. 5. Maybole (erected 1384) and Kilmun (1441) are the only Gaelic examples. Maybole was, however, the first collegiate church to be founded according to the formula which became normative in Scotland. Helen Brown, ‘Secular Colleges in Late Medieval Scotland’, in Clive Burgess and Martin Heale (eds), The Late Medieval English College and Its Context (Woodbridge, 2008), p. 49.
K. A. Steer and J. W. M. Bannerman, Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture in the West Highlands (Edinburgh, 1977). Bannerman’s specific examples are referenced in MacGregor, ‘Church and Culture’, pp. 18–19, and note 82.
David H. Caldwell, Fiona M. McGibbon, Suzanne Miller and Nigel A. Ruckley, ‘The Image of a Celtic Society: Medieval West Highland Sculpture’, in Pamela O’Neill (ed.), Celts in Legend and Reality: Papers from the Sixth Australian Conference of Celtic Studies, University of Sydney, July 2007 (Sydney, 2010). My thanks to David Caldwell for allowing me to view this in advance of publication.
Audrey-Beth Fitch, The Search for Salvation: Lay Faith in Scotland, 1480–1560, ed. Elizabeth Ewan (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 22, 90;
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 319, 325. See also Andrew Breeze, ‘The Virgin’s Rosary and St Michael’s Scales’, Studia Celtica 24–5 (1989–90).
Sir William Fraser, The Chiefs of Grant, 3 vols (Edinburgh, 1883), 3, p. 111; Fitch, Search for Salvation, p. 29.
Julian M. Luxford, ‘The Collegiate Church as Mausoleum’, in Burgess and Heale (eds), Late Medieval English College, pp. 115 n. 15, 118. Interments are routinely recorded in Walter MacFarlane, Genealogical Collections concerning Families in Scotland, ed. Arthur Mitchell, Scottish History Society 33–4, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1900), 1, pp. 61–5, 192–231; W. MacKay (ed.), Chronicles of the Frasers: The Wardlaw Manuscript, 916–1674, Scottish History Society, first series, 47 (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 93–146.
R. W. Munro (ed.), Monro’s Western Isles of Scotland and Genealogies of the Clans, 1549 (Edinburgh, 1961), p. 63; RCAHMS Argyll, 4, pp. 250–1; Steer and Bannerman, Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture, p. 78.
Fitch, Search for Salvation, p. 21; Martin MacGregor, ‘The View from Fortingall: The Worlds of the Book of the Dean of Lismore’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, 22 (2006), pp. 60–1, 62. Donald Gregory, ‘A short obituary relating to the Highlands’, Archaeologia Scotica 3 (1831), p. 318, argued that the chronicle was sourced from early ecclesiastical records which existed in ‘several, if not all’ of the parishes in Argyll and Dunkeld.
MacKay (ed.), Chronicles of the Frasers, p. 3; Martin MacGregor, ‘The Genealogical Histories of Gaelic Scotland’, in Adam Fox and Daniel Woolf (eds), The Spoken Word: Oral Culture in Britain 1500–1850 (Manchester, 2002), pp. 208–9.
Cosmo Innes (ed.), The Black Book of Taymouth: with other papers from the Breadalbane charter room, Bannatyne Club (Edinburgh, 1855), pp. 109–48.
Sìm R. Innes, ‘Is eagal liom lá na harga: Devotion to the Virgin in the Later Medieval Gàidhealtachd’, in Steve Boardman and Eila Williamson (eds), The Cult of Saints and the Virgin Mary in Medieval Scotland (Woodbridge, 2010).
William J. Watson (ed.), Scottish Verse from the Book of the Dean of Lismore (Edinburgh, 1937), pp. 60–5, 196–203, 298. Interestingly, the obit (19 July 1518) of this individual is also listed in the chronicle of Fortingall. My thanks to Martin MacGregor for these references.
For Ireland, see articles by Colmán N. Ó Clabaigh, ‘Religious Orders’, and Elizabeth Malcolm, ‘Medicine’, in Seán Duffy (ed.) Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia (Abingdon, 2005). For Gaelic Scotland, see
P. G. B. McNeill and H. L. MacQueen (eds), Atlas of Scottish History to 1707 (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 342–5. A hospital for the poor on Lismore is also recorded in February 1420 and a monastic infirmary in Iona Abbey doubtless catered for pilgrims as well as aged monks: E. R. Lindsay and A. I. Cameron (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1418–1422, Scottish History Society, third series, 23 (Edinburgh, 1934), p. 175; RCAHMS Argyll, 4, pp. 131–2. My thanks to Janet MacDonald for this latter reference.
Cowan, Medieval Church, p. 153; Ronald Black (ed.), An Lasair: An Anthology of 18th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse (Edinburgh, 2001) p. xxxii.
Lindsay and Cameron (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications … 1418–1422, pp. 173, 175, 188, 267–8, 268–9, 271–2, 275–6; Annie I. Dunlop (ed.), Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1423–1428, Scottish History Society, third series, 48 (Edinburgh, 1956), pp. 7–8, 182, 199;
Annie I. Dunlop and Ian B. Cowan (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1428–1432, Scottish History Society, fourth series, 7 (Edinburgh, 1970), p. 182;
Annie I. Dunlop, David MacLauchlan and Ian B. Cowan (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1433–1447 (Glasgow, 1983), nos 796, 828.
For English examples of parochial hospitality, see CPL, 6, p. 212; 11, pp. 317, 618. For canon law, see Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Its Application in England (Berkeley, 1959), pp. 84–5.
Katharine Simms, ‘Guesting and Feasting in Gaelic Ireland’, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 108 (1978); Catherine Marie O’Sullivan, Hospitality in Medieval Ireland, 900–1500 (Dublin, 2004).
James V., Letters of James V, pp. 345–6; Steer and Bannerman, Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture, pp. 65, 120; RCAHMS Argyll, 1, p. 134; 2, pp. 23, 25; 4, pp. 22, 24–5; 5, pp. 32, 34, 234; 7, p. 12; Innes (ed.), Black Book of Taymouth, p. 17. See entries for the churches of Blair, Dowally and Caputh in Corpus. See also Jefferies, Irish Church, pp. 15–22; Euan Cameron, ‘Introduction’, in Euan Cameron (ed.), The Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 2006) p. 6.
For MacDomhnaill, Caimbeul, Mac an Tòisich and MacLachlainn chiefs, see above; J. Munro and R. W. Munro (eds), Acts of the Lords of the Isles, 1336–1493, Scottish History Society, fourth series, 22 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 40–1;
Janet P. Foggie, Renaissance Religion in Urban Scotland: The Dominican Order¸ 1450–1560 (Leiden, 2003), pp. 148–9;
Stephen Boardman, The Campbells, 1250–1513 (Edinburgh, 2006), pp. 118–20, 132 and n. 76. Clann Donnchaidh (the Robertsons) were also developing closer ties with the Blackfriars of Perth:
Robert Milne (ed.), The Blackfriars of Perth: the chartulary and papers of their house (Edinburgh, 1893) pp. 85–8, 95–7, 104–5.
Ian B. Cowan and David E. Easson, Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland (London, 1976) p. 137; Richard Copsey, OCarm., ‘Foundation Dates of Scottish Carmelite Houses’, IR 49.1 (1998), conjectures 1480x1492, but the appearance of a ‘Proc[ura]tor of Kyngussy’ on 18 November 1475 suggests an earlier date for its foundation, perhaps shortly after the succession of George, Second Earl of Huntly, in July 1470: NAS, Papers of the Erskine Family, Earls of Mar and Kellie, GD124/1/114, no. 2. Carmelite procurators mediated between benefactors and friaries. Several are listed in
P. J. Anderson (ed.), Aberdeen Friars: Red, Black, White, Grey: Preliminary Calendar of Illustrative Documents (Aberdeen, 1909).
R. K. Hannay (ed.), Acts of the Lords of Council in Public Affairs, 1501–1554 (Edinburgh, 1932), p. 131.
William M. Hennessy and B. MacCarthy (eds), Annála Uladh/Annals of Ulster, 4 vols (Dublin, 1887–1901), 3, pp. 476–7; Wilson McLeod, ‘The Rhetorical Geography of the Late Medieval Irish Chronicles’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 40 (2000). A couple of Irish mendicants won benefices in Argyll and the Hebrides. Mìcheal, ‘provincial of the Friars Minor in Ireland, was transferred from the archbishopric of Cashel to the see of Sodor in 1387; ‘Odo Olorchan [Aodh Ó Lorcáin], brother of the order of Mendicants’ from Clonfert diocese was rector of Eilean Munde in the 1460s. Examples were not confined to the western seaboard: payments made to friars from Ireland were registered in early sixteenth-century royal accounts, while the Franciscan ‘Donatus Makdunlawe’ [Dúnán MacDhuinnshlèibhe?] from Cloyne diocese was prebendary of Rathven in Aberdeen diocese sometime before 1487: Cathcart, ‘James V, King of Scotland — and Ireland?’, p. 136;
Charles Burns, ‘Papal Letters of Clement VII of Avignon (1378–1394) relating to Ireland and England’, Collectanea Hibernica 24 (1982), pp. 30, 41; Kirk, Tanner and Dunlop (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications … 1447–1471, nos 1277, 1288; CPL, xii, p. 385;
J. Kirk, R. J. Tanner and A. MacQuarrie (eds), ‘Calendar of Scottish Supplications to Rome, 1472–1492’ (unpublished edition, University of Glasgow, 1997), no. 1399.
Alec Ryrie, ‘Reform without Frontiers in the Last Years of Catholic Scotland’, English Historical Review 119 (2004), p. 45.
Alison Cathcart, Kinship and Clientage: Highland Clanship, 1451–1609 (Leiden, 2006) pp. 143–4; Boardman, Campbells, p. 324.
J. Stuart et al. (eds), The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, 23 vols (Edinburgh, 1878–1908), 12, pp. 703–4.
M. Livingstone et al. (eds), Registrum Secreti Sigilli Regum Scotorum, 8 vols (Edinburgh, 1908–1982), 1, no. 1797. In 1501 the rector and patron of Glassary parish church also complained of ‘wild men’ who unjustly oppressed the parishioners through the customary exaction of sorning: CPL, 17, part 1, no. 493; Boardman, Campbells, pp. 324–5.
Lindsay and Cameron (eds), Calendar of Scottish Supplications … 1423–1428, p. 199; J. R. N. MacPhail (ed.), Highland Papers, Scottish History Society, second series, 5, 12, 20; 3rd series, 22, 4 vols (Edinburgh, 1914–34), 4, pp. 162–3; W. H. Bliss (ed.), Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland: Petitions to the Pope (London, 1896), p. 200. Richard Oram and W. Paul Adderley, ‘Lordship and Environmental Change in Central Highland Scotland, c.1300–c.1400’, Journal of the North Atlantic 1 (2008), argue that exactions in Badenoch were driven by climatic changes.
Iain Gerard MacDonald, ‘The Secular Church and Clergy in the Diocese of Argyll from circa 1189 to circa 1560’ (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008), pp. 95–118, 118–21; MacGregor, ‘Church and Culture’, p. 23; Steer and Bannerman, Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture, pp. 122, 145; Derick S. Thomson, ‘Gaelic Learned Orders and Literati in Medieval Scotland’, Scottish Studies 12 (1968).
Leslie J. Macfarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland, 1431–1514: The Struggle for Order (Aberdeen, 1985), pp. 293, 297, 299; MacDonald, ‘Secular Church’, pp. 171–2.
Katharine Simms, ‘Frontiers in the Irish Church — Regional and Cultural’, in T. B. Barry, Robin Frame and Katherine Simms (eds), Colony and Frontier in Medieval Ireland (London, 1995), p. 181.
MacDonald, ‘Secular Church’, pp. 163–4; Cowan, Medieval Church, pp. 198–211, esp. 206–7; Thomas Watson-Graham, ‘Patronage, Provision and Reservation: Scotland during the Pontificate of Paul III’ (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 1992), pp. 169, 171–2, 172–3, 197–8, 301–9.
Michelle Armstrong-Partida, ‘Priestly Marriage: The Tradition of Clerical Concubinage in the Spanish Church’, Viator 40.2 (2009); Kirsi Salonen, The Penitentiary as a Well of Grace in the Late Middle Ages: The Example of the Province of Uppsala, 1448–1527 (Saarijärvi, 2001), pp. 200–3.
Canice Mooney OFM, The Church in Gaelic Ireland: 13 th to 15 th Centuries, A History of Irish Catholicism 2.5 (Dublin, 1969), p. 59; Steer and Bannerman, Late Medieval Monumental Sculpture, pp. 101, 108; Margaret H. B. Sanderson, Cardinal of Scotland: David Beaton, c. 1494–1546 (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 40–2.
Cathaldus Giblin (ed.), Irish Franciscan Missions to Scotland, 1619–1646: Documents from Roman Archives (Dublin, 1964), pp. 63–4; Alasdair Roberts, ‘Roman Catholicism in the Highlands’, in Kirk (ed.), Church in the Highlands, p. 67;
Norman Tanner, The Ages of Faith: Popular Religion in Late Medieval England and Western Europe (London, 2009), pp. 193–4.
Donald E. Meek, The Quest for Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh, 2000) pp. 161–76, esp. p. 163.
Diarmuid O’Laoghaire, ‘Prayers and Hymns in the Vernacular’, in James P. Mackey (ed.), An Introduction to Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh, 1989);
Michael D. Bailey, ‘Concern over Superstition in Late Medieval Europe’, in S. A. Smith and Alan Knight (eds), The Religion of Fools? Superstition Past and Present, Past and Present Supplement 3 (Oxford, 2008).
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MacDonald, I.G. (2014). The Church in Gaelic Scotland before the Reformation. In: hAnnracháin, T.Ó., Armstrong, R. (eds) Christianities in the Early Modern Celtic World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137306357_2
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