Waltheof of Melrose
Waltheof was a 12th-century English abbot and saint. He was the son of Simon I of St Liz, 1st Earl of Northampton and Maud, 2nd Countess of Huntingdon, thus stepson to David I of Scotland, the grandson of Waltheof, Earl of Northampton; as a younger son in the world of Norman succession laws, Waltheof chose a career in the church. Between 1128 and 1131 he entered Nostell Priory to become an Augustinian canon, his noble connections enabled him to rise quickly. Within a few years he became Prior of North Yorkshire. Upon the death of Thurstan, Archbishop of York, in 1140, Waltheof was nominated to be his successor, his candidacy was supported by William of the Earl of York. Stephen sensing his links to David and hence to the Empress Matilda were too strong, rejected the nomination. William of Aumale withdrew his support after Waltheof refused to promise to give the earl the ecclesiastical manor of Sherburn-in-Elmet in the West Riding of Yorkshire. William fitz Herbert was instead chosen by Stephen. Waltheof featured prominently among those opposing William's provision, but by 1143 he had given up and become a Cistercian monk at Rievaulx Abbey.
In 1148 he was elected to the abbacy of a daughter house of Rievaulx. Waltheof remained in this position for the remainder of his life though he was offered of the bishopric of St Andrews in early 1159, which he declined, he died at Melrose Abbey on 3 August 1159. Following the death of Waltheof, his successor as Abbot of Melrose, Abbot William, refused to encourage the rumours that were now spreading regarding Waltheof's saintliness. Abbot William attempted to silence these rumours, prevent the intrusiveness of would-be pilgrims. However, William was unable to get the better of Waltheof's emerging cult, now his actions were alienating him from his brethren; as a result, in April 1170, William resigned the abbacy. In William's place, the prior of Melrose, became abbot. Jocelin had no such scruples. Jocelin embraced the cult without hesitation. Under the year of Jocelin's accession, it was reported in the Chronicle of Melrose that: The tomb of our pious father, sir Waltheof, the second abbot of Melrose, was opened by Enguerrand, of good memory, the bishop of Glasgow, by four abbots called in for this purpose.
And after the holy celebration of mass, the same bishop, the abbots whose number we have mentioned above, placed over the remains of his most holy body a new stone of polished marble. And there was great gladness. Promoting saints was something Jocelin would repeat as Bishop of Glasgow, where he would commission a hagiography of Saint Kentigern, the saint most venerated by the Celts of the diocese of Glasgow, it is no coincidence that Jocelin of Furness, who wrote the Life of St. Waltheof, was the same man commissioned to write the Life of St. Kentigern. Jocelin's actions ensured Waltheof's posthumous de facto sainthood.
Archdiocese of St Andrews
The Diocese or Archdiocese of St Andrews was a territorial episcopal jurisdiction in early modern and medieval Scotland. It was the largest, most populous and wealthiest diocese of the medieval Scottish church, with territory in eastern Scotland stretching from Berwickshire and the Anglo-Scottish border to Aberdeenshire. Although not an archdiocese until 1472, St Andrews was recognised as the chief see of the Scottish church from at least the 11th century, it came to be one of two archdioceses of the Scottish church, from the early 16th century having the bishoprics of Aberdeen, Caithness, Dunkeld, Moray and Ross as suffragans. One Pictish king-list credits Óengus II, King of the Picts, as the founder of the monastery-church at St Andrews, but an obituary of a St Andrews' abbot is recorded in the Annals of Ulster for the year 747, around seven decades before this king ruled; the obituary of Túathalán, the abbot in question, constitutes the earliest literary evidence for St Andrews. It is possible that the church was founded during the reign of Óengus I, ruling during this time.
Historian Jame Fraser points out that in England both Canterbury and York were dedicated to St Peter, with their junior bishoprics dedicated to St Andrew, that is, the churches of Hexham and Rochester. It is possible thus that St Andrews was established as a bishopric from the outset, junior to the bishopric of Rosemarkie, which appears to have been dedicated to St Peter, it is possible that the emergence of the cult of St Andrew in the 8th century was connected with the appearance of "Constantine" as a royal name in the era, St Andrew being the patron of Constantinople. The diocese's head, the Bishop of St Andrews, came to be regarded as the chief cleric of the kingdom of Scotland, ahead of the Bishop of Glasgow, the Bishop of Dunkeld and the Bishop of Aberdeen; the Augustinian account of the foundation of St Andrews, written between 1140 and 1153, notes and comments on a book-cover and the titles of the bishops:...rom ancient times they have been called bishops of St Andrew, in both ancient and modern writings they are found called "High Archbishops" or "High Bishops of the Scots".
Which is why Fothad, a man of the greatest authority, caused to be written on the cover of a gospel book these lines:'Fothad, High Bishop of the Scots, made this cover for an ancestral gospel-book'. So now in the ordinary and common speech they are called Escop Alban, that is, "Bishops of Alba". After the archbishopric of York received its first French archbishop, York was claiming the Scottish bishoprics beyond the River Forth to be its suffragans as part of the hierarchy of the Latin Church; because Scotland, north of the Forth, had never been in the Roman Empire or part of Anglo-Saxon England, it was difficult for the church of York to produce any evidence of its claim, but it was established that Britannia had two archbishops in the Latin hierarchy. The time of Giric, styled as Archbishop in Scottish sources, St Andrews is claimed to be an "apostolic see" and the "second Rome". Eadmer, an Englishman from Canterbury was appointed to St Andrews by Alexander I in 1120, but was forced to resign the see soon after because Alexander I would not agree to make the bishopric part of the English church under Canterbury.
Although possessing native Scottish bishops until the end of the 11th-century, with Fothad II or Cathróe being the last, the diocese was to have no Scottish-born bishops until the accession David de Bernham in 1239. Despite this, the Scottish see withstood York and Canterbury pressure, delivered through the Pope and the English king. Requests were made to the papacy for an archbishopric at St Andrews, although these failed, the Scottish bishoprics were recognised as independent in 1192. In 1472, Scotland seized Norðreyjar, pledged by the King of Norway, in 1468, as security for the promise of a dowry, never delivered. Accordingly, the diocese of Caithness was transferred from the Archdiocese of Niðaróss, in Norway, to oversight by St Andrews. At this juncture, St Andrews became a papally-recognized archbishopric. Papal assessors in the late 13th century put the diocese's income at just over 8000 pounds, twice that recorded for the diocese of Glasgow; the diocese was the largest in the medieval Kingdom of Scotland territorially, stretching from Berwick-upon-Tweed to Nigg on the river Dee near Aberdeen.
Like many other Scottish dioceses, its territory was fragmented in parts. Detached parishes of the bishoprics of Aberdeen and Dunkeld cut up the diocese, while the diocese of Brechin lay within its boundaries; the bishops possessed a castle in St Andrews, manors through their diocese fortified during the episcopate of William de Lamberton: Inchmurdo, Monimail, Torry and Monymusk, all north of the Forth, Stow of Wedale and Liston in Lothian. There was an important episcopal manor at Tyninghame near Dunbar; when it became an archdiocese in 1472, the other 12 Scottish sees became its suffragans. In 1492, the diocese of Glasgow became an archbishopric too, taking Dunkeld, Dunblane and Galloway away from St Andrews. Within a few decades Dunkeld and Dunblane were back under St Andrews, though the bishopric of the Isles was transferred to Glasgow later. By 1300 232 parish churches are known for the diocese, it was divided into two territorial archdeaconries, both divided into provincial deaneries: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh
Scotland in the High Middle Ages
The High Middle Ages of Scotland encompass Scotland in the era between the death of Domnall II in 900 AD and the death of King Alexander III in 1286, an indirect cause of the Scottish Wars of Independence. At the close of the ninth century, various competing kingdoms occupied the territory of modern Scotland. Scandinavian influence was dominant in the northern and western islands, Brythonic culture in the southwest, the Anglo-Saxon or English Kingdom of Northumbria in the southeast and the Pictish and Gaelic Kingdom of Alba in the east, north of the River Forth. By the tenth and eleventh centuries, northern Great Britain was dominated by Gaelic culture, by the Gaelic regal lordship of Alba, known in Latin as either Albania or Scotia, in English as "Scotland". From its base in the east, this kingdom acquired control of the lands lying to the south and the west and much of the north, it had a flourishing culture, comprising part of the larger Gaelic-speaking world and an economy dominated by agriculture and trade.
After the twelfth-century reign of King David I, the Scottish monarchs are better described as Scoto-Norman than Gaelic, preferring French culture to native Scottish culture. A consequence was social values including Canon law; the first towns, called burghs, appeared in the same era, as they spread, so did the Middle English language. These developments were offset by the acquisition of the Norse-Gaelic west and the Gaelicisation of many of the noble families of French and Anglo-French origin. National cohesion was fostered with the creation of various unique cultural practices. By the end of the period, Scotland experienced a "Gaelic revival", which created an integrated Scottish national identity. By 1286, these economic, cultural and legal developments had brought Scotland closer to its neighbours in England and the Continent, although outsiders continued to view Scotland as a provincial savage place. By this date, the Kingdom of Scotland had political boundaries that resembled those of the modern nation.
Scotland in the High Middle Ages is a well-studied topic and Scottish medievalists have produced a wide variety of publications. Some, such as David Dumville, Thomas Owen Clancy and Dauvit Broun, are interested in the native cultures of the country, have linguistic training in the Celtic languages. Normanists, such as G. W. S. Barrow, are concerned with the Norman and Scoto-Norman cultures introduced to Scotland after the eleventh century. For much of the twentieth century, historians tended to stress the cultural change that took place in Scotland during this time. However, scholars such as Cynthia Neville and Richard Oram, while not ignoring cultural changes, argue that continuity with the Gaelic past was just as, if not more, important. Since the publication of Scandinavian Scotland by Barbara E. Crawford in 1987, there has been a growing volume of work dedicated to the understanding of Norse influence in this period. However, from 849 on, when Columba's relics were removed from Iona in the face of Viking incursions, written evidence from local sources in the areas under Scandinavian influence all but vanishes for three hundred years.
The sources for information about the Hebrides and indeed much of northern Scotland from the eighth to the eleventh century, are thus exclusively Irish, English or Norse. The main Norse texts should be treated with care; the English and Irish sources are more contemporary, but according to historian Alex Woolf, may have "led to a southern bias in the story" as much of the Hebridean archipelago became Norse-speaking during this period. There are various traditional clan histories dating from the nineteenth century such as the "monumental" The Clan Donald and a significant corpus of material from the Gaelic oral tradition that relates to this period, although their value is questionable. At the close of the ninth century various polities occupied Scotland; the Pictish and Gaelic Kingdom of Alba had just been united in the east. Ragnall ua Ímair was a key figure at this time although the extent to which he ruled territory in western and northern Scotland including the Hebrides and Northern Isles is unknown as contemporary sources are silent on this matter.
Dumbarton, the capital of the Kingdom of Strathclyde had been sacked by the Uí Ímair in 870. This was a major assault, which may have brought the whole of mainland Scotland under temporary Uí Imair control; the south-east had been absorbed by the English Kingdom of Bernicia/Northumbria in the seventh century. Galloway in the south west was a Lordship with some regality. In a Galwegian charter dated to the reign of Fergus, the Galwegian ruler styled himself rex Galwitensium, King of Galloway. In the north east the ruler of Moray was called not only "king" in both Scandinavian and Irish sources, but before Máel Snechtai, "King of Alba". However, when Domnall mac Causantín died at Dunnottar in 900, he was the first man to be recorded as rí Alban and his kingdom was the nucleus that would expand as Viking and other influences waned. In the tenth century the Alban elite had begun to develop a conquest myth to explain their increasing Gaelicisation at the expense of Pictish culture. Known as MacAlpin's Treason, it describes how Cináed mac Ailpín is supposed to have annihilated the Picts in one fell takeover.
However, modern historians are now beginning to reject this conceptualization of Scottish origins. No contemporary sources mention this conquest. Moreover, the Gaelicisation of Pictland was a long process predating Cináed, is evidenced by Gaelic-speaking Pictish rulers, Pictish royal pa
Abbot of Scone
The Abbot of Scone, before 1163 x 4, Prior of Scone, by the beginning of the 16th century, the Commendator of Scone, was the head of the community of Augustinian canons of Scone Abbey and their lands. The priory was established by King Alaxandair mac Maíl Choluim sometime between 1114 and 1120, was elevated to the status of an abbey in 1163 or 1164; the abbey was turned into a secular lordship for William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie in 1581, but was forfeited when the earl was executed in 1584, given to William Foularton in the same year, but restored to the earl's son, James Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie. An independent secular lordship was established for David Murray in 1608. Robert, 1114 x 1120-1127 Nicholas, 1127-1140 Dionysius, 1140 - 1142 x 1147 Thomas, 1150-1154 Isaac, 1154-1162 Robert, 1162 Robert, 1163x1164-1186 Robert, 1186-1198 Reimbald, 1198-1206 William, 1206 x 1209-1225 Robert, 1227 Philip, 1230-1242 Robert, 1240-1270 Nicholas, 1270-1273 x William, 1273 x 1284 Hugh, x 1284-1287 Thomas de Balmerino, 1291-1312 Henry Man, 1303-1320 Simon, 1325-1341 Adam de Crail, 1343-1344 William, 1354-1370 x 1391 Alexander, 1370 x 1391-1412 x 1417 Alexander de Balbirnie, 1412 x 1417-x1418 Adam de Crannach, 1418-1432 John de Inverkeithing, 1432 William de Skurry, 1435-1439 James Kennedy, 1439-1447 George Gardiner, 1445-1447 Thomas de Camera, 1447-1458 John Crambe, 1465-1491 David Lermonth, 1492-1496 Henry Abercrombie, 1492 James Abercrombie, 1492-1514 Alexander Stewart de Pitcairne, 1518-1537 Patrick Hepburn, 1538-1571 William Lord Ruthven, 1571 John Ruthven, 1580 William Ruthven, 1st Earl of Gowrie, 1581-1584 William Foularton, 1584 James Ruthven, 2nd Earl of Gowrie, 1587-1588 John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, 1592-1600 David Murray, 1608 Cowan, Ian B.
& Easson, David E. Medieval Religious Houses: Scotland With an Appendix on the Houses in the Isle of Man, Second Edition, pp. 97–8 Watt, D. E. R. & Shead, N. F; the Heads of Religious Houses in Scotland from the 12th to the 16th Centuries, The Scottish Records Society, New Series, Volume 24, pp. 198–202 Viscount Stormont Stone of Scone
Abbot
Abbot, meaning father, is an ecclesiastical title given to the male head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may be given as an honorary title to a clergyman, not the head of a monastery; the female equivalent is abbess. The title had its origin in the monasteries of Egypt and Syria, spread through the eastern Mediterranean, soon became accepted in all languages as the designation of the head of a monastery; the word is derived from the Aramaic av meaning "father" or abba, meaning "my father". In the Septuagint, it was written as "abbas". At first it was employed as a respectful title for any monk, but it was soon restricted by canon law to certain priestly superiors. At times it was applied to various priests, e.g. at the court of the Frankish monarchy the Abbas palatinus and Abbas castrensis were chaplains to the Merovingian and Carolingian sovereigns’ court and army respectively. The title abbot came into general use in western monastic orders whose members include priests.
An abbot is the head and chief governor of a community of monks, called in the East hegumen or archimandrite. The English version for a female monastic head is abbess. In Egypt, the first home of monasticism, the jurisdiction of the abbot, or archimandrite, was but loosely defined. Sometimes he ruled over only one community, sometimes over several, each of which had its own abbot as well. Saint John Cassian speaks of an abbot of the Thebaid. By the Rule of St Benedict, until the Cluniac reforms, was the norm in the West, the abbot has jurisdiction over only one community; the rule, as was inevitable, was subject to frequent violations. Monks, as a rule, at the outset was the abbot any exception. For the reception of the sacraments, for other religious offices, the abbot and his monks were commanded to attend the nearest church; this rule proved inconvenient when a monastery was situated in a desert or at a distance from a city, necessity compelled the ordination of some monks. This innovation was not introduced without a struggle, ecclesiastical dignity being regarded as inconsistent with the higher spiritual life, before the close of the 5th century, at least in the East, abbots seem universally to have become deacons, if not priests.
The change spread more in the West, where the office of abbot was filled by laymen till the end of the 7th century. The ecclesiastical leadership exercised by abbots despite their frequent lay status is proved by their attendance and votes at ecclesiastical councils, thus at the first Council of Constantinople, AD 448, 23 archimandrites or abbots sign, with 30 bishops. The second Council of Nicaea, AD 787, recognized the right of abbots to ordain their monks to the inferior orders below the diaconate, a power reserved to bishops. Abbots used to be subject to episcopal jurisdiction, continued so, in fact, in the West till the 11th century; the Code of Justinian expressly subordinates the abbot to episcopal oversight. The first case recorded of the partial exemption of an abbot from episcopal control is that of Faustus, abbot of Lerins, at the council of Arles, AD 456; these exceptions, introduced with a good object, had grown into a widespread evil by the 12th century creating an imperium in imperio, depriving the bishop of all authority over the chief centres of influence in his diocese.
In the 12th century, the abbots of Fulda claimed precedence of the archbishop of Cologne. Abbots more and more assumed episcopal state, in defiance of the prohibition of early councils and the protests of St Bernard and others, adopted the episcopal insignia of mitre, ring and sandals, it has been maintained that the right to wear mitres was sometimes granted by the popes to abbots before the 11th century, but the documents on which this claim is based are not genuine. The first undoubted instance is the bull by which Alexander II in 1063 granted the use of the mitre to Egelsinus, abbot of the monastery of St Augustine at Canterbury; the mitred abbots in England were those of Abingdon, St Alban's, Battle, Bury St Edmunds, St Augustine's Canterbury, Croyland, Glastonbury, Gloucester, St Benet's Hulme, Malmesbury, Ramsey, Selby, Tavistock, Westminster, St Mary's York. Of these the precedence was yielded to the abbot of Glastonbury, until in AD 1154 Adrian IV granted it to the abbot of St Alban's, in which monastery he had been brought up.
Next after the abbot of St Alban's ranked the abbot of Westminster and Ramsey. Elsewhere, the mitred abbots that sat in the Estates of Scotland were of Arbroath, Coupar Angus, Holyrood, Kelso, Kinloss, Paisley, Scone, St Andrews Priory and Sweetheart. To distinguish abbots from bishops, it was ordained that their mitre should be made
Giric
Giric mac Dúngail (Modern Gaelic: Griogair mac Dhunghail, known in English as Giric, nicknamed Mac Rath,. The Irish annals record nothing of Giric's reign, nor do Anglo-Saxon writings add anything, the meagre information which survives is contradictory. Modern historians disagree as to whether Giric was sole king or ruled jointly with Eochaid, on his ancestry, if he should be considered a Pictish king or the first king of Alba. Although little is now known of Giric, he appears to have been regarded as an important figure in Scotland in the High Middle Ages and the Late Middle Ages. Scots chroniclers such as John of Fordun, Andrew of Wyntoun, Hector Boece and the humanist scholar George Buchanan wrote of Giric as "King Gregory the Great" and told how he had conquered half of England and Ireland too; the Chronicle of Melrose and some versions of the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba say that Giric died at Dundurn in Strathearn. Giric's name is associated with that of St Cyricus, who, as a small child, was martyred along with his mother during the Diocletianic persecution in the early fourth century.
According to the Chronicles of the Kings of Scotland, St Cyricus was Giric's patron saint, not only because his name is homophonous with the Latin form of the saint's name, but because the first church dedicated to St Cyricus was established during Giric's reign at a place called Ecclesgrieg in Aberdeenshire. The saint's feast day is June 16, on that day in 885, there was a solar eclipse, which has become associated with the kingship of Giric and Eochaid, inasmuch as not long after the occasion of the eclipse, the two "were expelled from the kingdom." Various theories have been put forward regarding the relationship between Eochaid and Giric, who by all accounts was the elder of the two. The Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, written in Latin, used the phrase alumnus ordinatorque to describe Giric’s relationship to Eochaid. Translator T. H. Weeks chose to translate that phrase into English as “teacher and prime minister," yet in the same section offered “foster-son” for alumnus, translating “Eochodius, cum alumno suo, expulsus est nunc de regno” as “Eochaid with his ‘foster-son,’ was thrown out of the kingdom.”
”There is a tendency in popular history books and web sites to refer to the two as “cousins” or “first cousins once removed."However, this cousin kinship is only speculation since the ancestry of Giric is obscure. Runh, the father of Eochaid, is known to have been “a king of the Britons,” but little is known of Dungal, the father of Giric, which may be the reason for the speculation that he did not have royal lineage. A writer for the popular web site Undiscovered Scotland found the best solution, referring to Giric as Eochaid’s “rather shadowy kinsman.”Two scholars have defined the two in political rather than kinship terms. A. Weeks, speculated, “Possibly Giric was not of royal blood, so he used Eochaid as a puppet.” In 1904, Sir John Rhys, professor at Oxford, reached a similar conclusion, positing that “the real relation in which Girg stood to Eochaid was that of a non Celtic king of Pictish descent wielding the power of the Pictish nation with Eochaid ruling among the Brythons of Fortrenn more or less subject to him.”
What is known of the two is that in 878 Giric killed Aed “in battle” in the town of Nrurim, north of Stirling. Giric and Eochaid, whatever their relationship, ruled jointly for eleven years; the Prophecy of Berchán, an 11th-century verse history of Scots and Irish kings presented as a prophecy, is a notably difficult source. As the Prophecy refers to kings by epithets, but never by name, linking it to other materials is not straightforward; the Prophecy is believed to refer to Giric by the epithet Mac Rath, "the Son of Fortune". The entry on Giric in the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba is corrupt, it states:And Eochaid, son of Run, the king of the Britons grandson of Kenneth by his daughter reigned for eleven years. And in second year, Áed, Niall's son, died. Eochaid with his foster-father was now expelled from the kingdom. Kenneth is Kenneth MacAlpin. By the 12th century, Giric had acquired legendary status as liberator of the Scottish church from Pictish oppression and, fantastically, as conqueror of Ireland and most of England.
As a result, Giric was known as Gregory the Great. This tale appears in the variant of the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, interpolated in Andrew of Wyntoun's Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland. Here Giric, or Grig, is named "Makdougall", son of Dúngal. Giric, Eochaid, are omitted from the Duan Albanach, but they are not unique in this; this account, found in the Poppleton Manuscript, is not matched by other regnal lists. The lists known as "D", "F", "I", "K", "N", contain a different version, copied by the Chronicle of Melrose. List "D", which may be taken as typical, contains this account of Giric:Giric, Dungal's son, reigned for twelve years, he subdued to himself all Ireland, nearly England. Giric's conquests appear as Bernicia, rather than Ireland, in some versions. Wil
