Abernethy, Perth and Kinross
Abernethy is a village in Perth and Kinross, situated 8 mi south-east of Perth. The village's name is Brythonic, means "mouth of the Nethy"; the earliest recorded form being Apurnethige. The Nethy Burn flows down from the Ochil Hills past the present village; the name of the Nethy is believed to be cognate with that of the River Nith and Neath. The Gaelic form of the name derives from the same roots as the English name; the village was once the "capital" of the kingdom of the Picts. The parish church, which sits on land given by Nechtan,a king of the Picts, is dedicated to Saint Brigid of Kildare of, the church is said to have been founded by Dairlugdach, second abbess of Kildare, one of early Christian Ireland's major monasteries. Abernethy was the site of the Treaty of Abernethy in 1072 between William the Conqueror and Malcolm III of Scotland. Abernethy is believed to have been the seat of an early Pictish bishopric, its diocese extending westward along Strathearn. In the 12th century the bishop's seat was moved to Muthill Dunblane, so that Abernethy, no longer being a residential bishopric is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.
Abernethy remained the site of a small priory of Augustinian canons, founded 1272. In the 15th century, this priory was suppressed in favour of a collegiate church under the patronage of the Douglas Earls of Angus. Remains of the collegiate church survived until 1802 within the present village graveyard, when they were replaced by the present plain red sandstone church, still dedicated to Saint Brigid; the village has one of Scotland's two surviving Irish-style round towers. The tower stands 74 ft high, it is possible to climb to the top, using a modern metal spiral staircase; the tower was evidently built in two stages, dates to the 11th-early 12th centuries. Several pieces of Pictish or early medieval sculpture have been found in Abernethy, including an incomplete Pictish symbol stone attached to the base of the round tower; the location "Afarnach's Hall" referred to in the earliest mediaeval Arthurian literature is identified as Abernethy. The small but well stocked museum, open 2pm to 5pm from Wednesday to Sunday between May and September, has exhibits on the history of the village and holds a key to the tower.
Over the years local industry and commerce has declined. A general store is the only shop remaining on the Main Street. However, the village still manages to support a tea room. A mobile post office visits the village most weekdays. A Gala / Fete Day is held annually on the first or second Saturday in June, with a race to the top of nearby Castle Law taking place the following day; the village is located near the M90 motorway and has regular bus services connecting to nearby towns. Abernethy railway station served the village until 1955, when it was closed by the British Transport Commission. 1.^ The foundation of Abernethy is to be found in the Pictish Chronicle and links it to Nechtan Morbet. However, it may have been Nechtan nepos Uerb, the Nechtan mac Der-Ilei may have been confused with the previous two
Ecclesiastical History of the English People
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written by the Venerable Bede in about AD 731, is a history of the Christian Churches in England, of England generally. It was composed in Latin, is considered one of the most important original references on Anglo-Saxon history and has played a key role in the development of an English national identity, it is believed to have been completed in 731 when Bede was 59 years old. The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, or An Ecclesiastical History of the English People is Bede's best-known work, completed in about 731; the first of the five books begins with some geographical background and sketches the history of England, beginning with Caesar's invasion in 55 BC. A brief account of Christianity in Roman Britain, including the martyrdom of St Alban, is followed by the story of Augustine's mission to England in 597, which brought Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons; the second book begins with the death of Gregory the Great in 604, follows the further progress of Christianity in Kent and the first attempts to evangelise Northumbria.
These encountered a setback when Penda, the pagan king of Mercia, killed the newly Christian Edwin of Northumbria at the Battle of Hatfield Chase in about 632. The setback was temporary, the third book recounts the growth of Christianity in Northumbria under kings Oswald and Oswy; the climax of the third book is the account of the Council of Whitby, traditionally seen as a major turning point in English history. The fourth book begins with the consecration of Theodore as Archbishop of Canterbury, recounts Wilfrid's efforts to bring Christianity to the kingdom of Sussex; the fifth book brings the story up to Bede's day, includes an account of missionary work in Frisia, of the conflict with the British church over the correct dating of Easter. Bede wrote a preface for the work, king of Northumbria; the preface mentions. The preface makes it clear that Ceolwulf had requested the earlier copy, Bede had asked for Ceolwulf's approval. Divided into five books, the Historia covers the history of England and political, from the time of Julius Caesar to the date of its completion in 731.
The first twenty-one chapters, covering the period before the mission of Augustine, are compiled from earlier writers such as Orosius, Prosper of Aquitaine, the letters of Pope Gregory I, others, with the insertion of legends and traditions. After 596, documentary sources that Bede took pains to obtain throughout England and from Rome are used, as well as oral testimony, which he employed along with critical consideration of its authenticity; this is impressive. It seems to be a mixture of fact and literature. For example, Bede quotes at length some speeches by people who were not his contemporaries and whose speeches do not appear in any other surviving source; the monastery at Jarrow had an excellent library. Both Benedict Biscop and Ceolfrith had acquired books from the Continent, in Bede's day the monastery was a renowned centre of learning. For the period prior to Augustine's arrival in 597, Bede drew on earlier writers, including Orosius, Eutropius and Solinus, he used Constantius's Life of Germanus as a source for Germanus's visits to Britain.
Bede's account of the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons is drawn from Gildas's De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. Bede would have been familiar with more recent accounts such as Eddius Stephanus's Life of Wilfrid, anonymous Lives of Gregory the Great and Cuthbert, he drew on Josephus's Antiquities, the works of Cassiodorus, there was a copy of the Liber Pontificalis in Bede's monastery. Bede had correspondents who supplied him with material. Albinus, the abbot of the monastery in Canterbury, provided much information about the church in Kent, with the assistance of Nothhelm, at that time a priest in London, obtained copies of Gregory the Great's correspondence from Rome relating to Augustine's mission. All of Bede's information regarding Augustine is taken from these letters, which includes the Libellus responsionum, as chapter 27 of book 1 is known. Bede acknowledged his correspondents in the preface to the Historia Ecclesiastica. Bede mentions an Abbot Esi as a source for the affairs of the East Anglian church, Bishop Cynibert for information about Lindsey.
The historian Walter Goffart argues that Bede based the structure of the Historia on three works, using them as the framework around which the three main sections of the work were structured. For the early part of the work, up until the Gregorian mission, Goffart asserts that Bede used Gildas's De excidio; the second section, detailing the Gregorian mission of Augustine of Canterbury was framed on the anonymous Life of Gregory the Great written at Whitby. The last section, detailing events after the Gregorian mission, Goffart asserts were modelled on Stephen of Ripon's Life of Wilfrid
Andrew the Apostle
Andrew the Apostle known as Saint Andrew, was a Christian Apostle and the brother of Saint Peter. He is referred to in the Orthodox tradition as the First-Called. According to Orthodox tradition, the apostolic successor to Saint Andrew is the Patriarch of Constantinople; the name "Andrew", like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews and other Hellenized people of Judea. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him. Saint Andrew was born, in 6 BC in Galilee; the New Testament states that Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter, a son of John, or Jonah. He was born in the village of Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee. "The first striking characteristic of Andrew is his name: it is not Hebrew, as might have been expected, but Greek, indicative of a certain cultural openness in his family that cannot be ignored. We are in Galilee, where the Greek language and culture are quite present."Both he and his brother Peter were fishermen by trade, hence the tradition that Jesus called them to be his disciples by saying that he will make them "fishers of men".
At the beginning of Jesus' public life, they were said to have occupied the same house at Capernaum. In the Gospel of Matthew and in the Gospel of Mark Simon Peter and Andrew were both called together to become disciples of Jesus and "fishers of men"; these narratives record that Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, observed Simon and Andrew fishing, called them to discipleship. In the parallel incident in the Gospel of Luke Andrew is not named, nor is reference made to Simon having a brother. In this narrative, Jesus used a boat described as being Simon's, as a platform for preaching to the multitudes on the shore and as a means to achieving a huge trawl of fish on a night which had hitherto proved fruitless; the narrative indicates that Simon was not the only fisherman in the boat but it is not until the next chapter that Andrew is named as Simon's brother. However, it is understood that Andrew was fishing with Simon on the night in question. Matthew Poole, in his Annotations on the Holy Bible, stressed that'Luke denies not that Andrew was there'.
In contrast, the Gospel of John states that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose testimony first led him, another unnamed disciple of John the Baptist, to follow Jesus. Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messiah, hastened to introduce him to his brother; the Byzantine Church honours him with the name Protokletos, which means "the first called". Thenceforth, the two brothers were disciples of Christ. On a subsequent occasion, prior to the final call to the apostolate, they were called to a closer companionship, they left all things to follow Jesus. Subsequently, in the gospels, Andrew is referred to as being present on some important occasions as one of the disciples more attached to Jesus. Andrew told Jesus about the boy with the loaves and fishes, when Philip wanted to tell Jesus about certain Greeks seeking Him, he told Andrew first. Andrew was present at the Last Supper. Andrew was one of the four disciples who came to Jesus on the Mount of Olives to ask about the signs of Jesus' return at the "end of the age".
Eusebius in his Church History 3.1 quoted Origen as saying. The Chronicle of Nestor adds that he preached along the Black Sea and the Dnieper river as far as Kiev, from there he traveled to Novgorod. Hence, he became a patron saint of Ukraine and Russia. According to tradition, he founded the See of Byzantium in AD 38. According to Hippolytus of Rome, Andrew preached in Thrace, his presence in Byzantium is mentioned in the apocryphal Acts of Andrew. Basil of Seleucia knew of Apostle Andrew's missions in Thrace and Achaea; this diocese would develop into the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Andrew, along with Saint Stachys, is recognized as the patron saint of the Patriarchate. Andrew is said to have been martyred by crucifixion at the city of Patras in Achaea. Early texts, such as the Acts of Andrew known to Gregory of Tours, describe Andrew as bound, not nailed, to a Latin cross of the kind on which Jesus is said to have been crucified; the iconography of the martyrdom of Andrew — showing him bound to an X-shaped cross — does not appear to have been standardized until the Middle Ages.
The apocryphal Acts of Andrew, mentioned by Eusebius and others, is among a disparate group of Acts of the Apostles that were traditionally attributed to Leucius Charinus. "These Acts belong to the third century: ca. A. D. 260," in the opinion of M. R. James, who edited them in 1924; the Acts, as well as a Gospel of St Andrew, appear among rejected books in the Decretum Gelasianum connected with the name of Pope Gelasius I. The Acts of Andrew was edited and published by Constantin von Tischendorf in the Acta Apostolorum apocrypha, putting it for the first time into the hands of a critical professional readership. Another version of the Andrew legend is found in the Passio Andreae, published by Max Bonnet (Supplement
Cairn O' Mounth
Cairn O' Mounth/Cairn O' Mount is a high mountain pass in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The place name is a survival of the ancient name for what are now the Grampian Mountains, earlier called "the Mounth"; the name change happened from circa 1520 AD. The Ordnance Survey shows the name as Cairn o' Mount, it has served as an ancient military route at least from Roman times through the 13th century AD. The alignment of the Cairnamounth, Elsick Mounth and Causey Mounth ancient trackways had a strong influence on the medieval siting of many fortifications and other settlements in the area comprised by present-day Aberdeenshire on both sides of the River Dee. Cairn O' Mounth is at 1493 feet above mean sea level, there are various commanding views of the surrounding landscape which extend as far as the North Sea. Before the modern A90 road was constructed, the pass served as one of the eight major crossing points for those travelling over the Grampians to Deeside and into Northern Scotland. Deriving from this theory, a small village grew up in the pass.
The high granite tor of Clachnaben overlooks the road through the pass. The Scottish Tourist Board describes the modern B974 as an "adventurous" road, it is impassable due to snow or flooding in winter. In the summer fatalities are reported in the press. In the 11th century AD, Mac Bethad survived the original English invasion, for he was defeated and mortally wounded or killed by Máel Coluim mac Donnchada on the north side of the Mounth in 1057, after retreating with his men over the Cairnamounth Pass to take his last stand at the battle at Lumphanan; the Prophecy of Berchán has it that he was wounded and died at Scone, sixty miles to the south, some days later. Mac Bethad's stepson Lulach mac Gille Coemgáin was installed as king soon after; the Cairn O'Mounth pass was used by Edward I's English army in 1296 AD, en route back to England. It was used twice by Viscount Dundee's army during the first Jacobite rising of 1689; the route over the pass is prehistoric: there is a cairn in the pass, dated to 2000 BC.
It is possible. Causey Mounth Elsick Mounth Scottish Mountaineering Club, Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, 1920 William Forbes Skene, Chronicles of the Picts, Chronicles of the Scots, Other Early Memorials, 1867, H. M. General Register, Scotland, 499 pages
Bede
Bede known as Saint Bede, Venerable Bede, Bede the Venerable, was an English Benedictine monk at the monastery of St. Peter and its companion monastery of St. Paul in the Kingdom of Northumbria of the Angles. Born on lands belonging to the Monkwearmouth monastery in present-day Sunderland, Bede was sent there at the age of seven and joined Abbot Ceolfrith at the Jarrow monastery, both of whom survived a plague that struck in 686, an outbreak that killed a majority of the population there. While he spent most of his life in the monastery, Bede travelled to several abbeys and monasteries across the British Isles visiting the archbishop of York and King Ceolwulf of Northumbria, he is well known as an author and scholar, his most famous work, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, gained him the title "The Father of English History". His ecumenical writings were extensive and included a number of Biblical commentaries and other theological works of exegetical erudition. Another important area of study for Bede was the academic discipline of computus, otherwise known to his contemporaries as the science of calculating calendar dates.
One of the more important dates Bede tried to compute was Easter, an effort, mired with controversy. He helped establish the practice of dating forward from the birth of Christ, a practice which became commonplace in medieval Europe. Bede was one of the greatest teachers and writers of the Early Middle Ages and is considered by many historians to be the single most important scholar of antiquity for the period between the death of Pope Gregory I in 604 and the coronation of Charlemagne in 800. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church, he is the only native of Great Britain to achieve this designation. Bede was moreover a skilled linguist and translator, his work made the Latin and Greek writings of the early Church Fathers much more accessible to his fellow Anglo-Saxons, which contributed to English Christianity. Bede's monastery had access to an impressive library which included works by Eusebius and many others. Everything, known of Bede's life is contained in the last chapter of his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a history of the church in England.
It was completed in about 731, Bede implies that he was in his fifty-ninth year, which would give a birth date in 672 or 673. A minor source of information is the letter by his disciple Cuthbert. Bede, in the Historia, gives his birthplace as "on the lands of this monastery", he is referring to the twinned monasteries of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, in modern-day Wearside and Tyneside respectively. Bede says nothing of his origins, but his connections with men of noble ancestry suggest that his own family was well-to-do. Bede's first abbot was Benedict Biscop, the names "Biscop" and "Beda" both appear in a king list of the kings of Lindsey from around 800, further suggesting that Bede came from a noble family. Bede's name reflects West Saxon Bīeda, it is an Anglo-Saxon short name formed on the root of bēodan "to bid, command". The name occurs in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 501, as Bieda, one of the sons of the Saxon founder of Portsmouth. The Liber Vitae of Durham Cathedral names two priests with this name, one of whom is Bede himself.
Some manuscripts of the Life of Cuthbert, one of Bede's works, mention that Cuthbert's own priest was named Bede. At the age of seven, Bede was sent, as a puer oblatus, to the monastery of Monkwearmouth by his family to be educated by Benedict Biscop and by Ceolfrith. Bede does not say whether it was intended at that point that he would be a monk, it was common in Ireland at this time for young boys those of noble birth, to be fostered out as an oblate. Monkwearmouth's sister monastery at Jarrow was founded by Ceolfrith in 682, Bede transferred to Jarrow with Ceolfrith that year; the dedication stone for the church has survived to the present day. In 686, plague broke out at Jarrow; the Life of Ceolfrith, written in about 710, records that only two surviving monks were capable of singing the full offices. The two managed to do the entire service of the liturgy; the young boy was certainly Bede, who would have been about 14. When Bede was about 17 years old, Adomnán, the abbot of Iona Abbey, visited Monkwearmouth and Jarrow.
Bede would have met the abbot during this visit, it may be that Adomnan sparked Bede's interest in the Easter dating controversy. In about 692, in Bede's nineteenth year, Bede was ordained a deacon by his diocesan bishop, bishop of Hexham; the canonical age for the ordination of a deacon was 25.
Fortriu
Fortriu or the Kingdom of Fortriu is the name given by historians for a Pictish kingdom recorded between the 4th and 10th centuries, used synonymously with Pictland in general. While traditionally located in and around Strathearn in central Scotland, it is more to have been located in and around Moray and Easter Ross in the north; the people of Fortriu left no surviving indigenous writings and the name they used to describe themselves is unrecorded. The population group was first documented in the late 4th century by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who referred to them in Latin as the Verturiones; the Latin root verturio has been connected etymologically by John Rhys with the Welsh word gwerthyr, meaning "fortress", suggesting that both came from a Common Brittonic root vertera, implying that the group's name meant "Fortress People". A reconstructed form in the Pictish language would be something like *Uerteru. A connected Old Irish form of the name appears from the 6th to the 10th centuries in the Annals of Ulster and sources, which contain repeated references to rex Fortrenn, la firu Fortrenn and Maigh Fortrenn, alongside references to battles occurring i Fortrinn.
These are examples of a common pattern of Goidelic languages rendering with an f what in Brittonic languages is U/V, W or Gw. The word Fortriu is a modern reconstruction of a hypothetical nominative form for this word that has survived only in these genitive and dative cases. Anglo-Saxon sources, from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the 6th century to Bede in the 8th century, refer to the group using the Old English form of the name Waerteras. Modern scholars writing in English refer to the Kingdom using the name Fortriu and the adjective Verturian, use the name the Waerteras to refer to the people as an ethnic group. Traditionally the kingdom has been seen as centred on central Scotland, equivalent to the Kingdom of the Southern Picts, with a heartland in Strathearn. Over the last century or so this has become a scholarly consensus. However, new research by Alex Woolf seems to have destroyed this consensus, if not the idea itself; as Woolf has pointed out, the only basis for it had been that a battle had taken place in Strathearn in which the Men of Fortriu had taken part.
This is an unconvincing reason on its own, because there are two Strathearns — one in the south, one in the north — and, every battle has to be fought outside the territory of one of the combatants. By contrast, a northern recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes it clear that Fortriu was north of the Mounth, in the area visited by Columba; the long poem known as The Prophecy of Berchán, written in the 12th century, but purporting to be a prophecy made in the Early Middle Ages, says that Dub, King of Scotland was killed in the Plain of Fortriu. Another source, the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, indicates that King Dub was killed at Forres, a location in Moray. Moreover, additions to the Chronicle of Melrose confirm that Dub was killed by the men of Moray at Forres; the Prophecy of Berchán states that "Mac Bethad, the glorious king of Fortriu, will take." As Macbeth, King of Scotland may have been Mormaer of Moray before he became King of Scots, it is possible that Fortriu was understood to be interchangeable with Moray in the High Middle Ages.
Fortriu is mentioned as one of the seven ancient Pictish kingdoms in the 13th-century source known as De Situ Albanie. There can be little or no doubt that Fortriu centred on northern Scotland. Other Pictish scholars, such as James E. Fraser are now taking it for granted that Fortriu was in the north of Scotland, centred on Moray and Easter Ross, where most early Pictish monuments are located. Hence, it is in these areas that the united kingdom of the Picts originated acquiring southern Pictland after the expulsion of the Northumbrians by King Bridei III of the Picts at the Battle of Dun Nechtain in 685 CE. Relocating Fortriu north of the Mounth increases the importance of the Vikings; the Viking impact on the north was greater than in the south, in the north, the Vikings conquered and made permanent territorial gains. The creation of Alba or the Kingdom of Scotland from Pictland, traditionally associated with a conquest by Kenneth MacAlpin in 843, can be better understood in this context, it appears from a discovery made by Oliver Curran, a Northern Irish historian, that a tribe of the Fortriu were located at Newry, County Down: according to an 18th-century translation of Ptolemy's map of Ireland they are seen in the wider area marked Voluntii which he says corresponds with the Cruithne.
It is not yet known. There have been Pictish'Z' rod carvings and a settlement found on Trusty's hill at Gatehouse of Fleet and Galloway. There are numerous cup and ring carvings and megaliths in the Machars and the Rhins of Galloway hinting at a migration route to Ireland. Mormaer of Moray Anderson, Alan Orr, Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500-1286, 2 Vols, Sally M.. Picts and Gaels — Early Historic Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn. ISBN 9781780271910. Fraser, James. From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748612321. Hudson, Benjamin T. Kings of Celtic Scotland, William J.. Taylor, Simon, ed; the Celtic Placenames of Scotland. Edinburgh: Birlinn. ISBN 9781841583235. Woolf, Alex. "The Verturian Hegemony: A Mirror in the North". In Brown, Michelle P.. Mercia: an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe. Leicester: Leicester Un
