THE SECULAR CLERGY AND THE CULDEES.
[Sidenote: No appearance of name of Culdee till after expulsion of
Columban monks.]
It is not till after the expulsion of the Columban monks from the
kingdom of the Picts, in the beginning of the eighth century, that the
name of Culdee appears. To Adamnan, to Eddi and to Bede it was totally
unknown. They knew of no body of clergy who bore this name, and in the
whole range of ecclesiastical history there is nothing more entirely
destitute of authority than the application of this name to the Columban
monks of the sixth and seventh centuries,[431] or more utterly baseless
than the fabric which has been raised upon that assumption. Like many of
our popular notions, it originated with Hector Boece, and, at a time
when the influence of his fabulous history was still paramount in
Scotland, it became associated with an ecclesiastical controversy which
powerfully engaged the sympathies of the Scottish people; and this gave
it a force and vitality which renders it difficult for the popular mind
to regard the history of the early Scottish Church through any other
medium. At this most critical period of its history we unfortunately
lose the invaluable light afforded by the trustworthy narratives of
Adamnan and Bede, but their very silence shows that it was a name not
identified with the Monastic Church, which then not only prevailed in
Ireland, but embraced likewise the churches of the Scots and the Picts,
of the Cumbrians and the Northumbrians, but rather associated with those
influences which affected the monastic system in both countries.
[Sidenote: Monastic Church affected by two opposite influences:]
The Monastic Church was broken in upon by two opposite influences,
which, though very different in their characters, yet possessed one
feature in common, and were eventually to unite. One of these influences
was external to the Monastic Church. The other developed itself within
it.
[Sidenote: First, by secular clergy.]
The first arose when the Irish Church came in contact with that of Rome,
and is associated with the controversy regarding Easter, and other Roman
usages which arose out of it. Although the monastic system was an
important and recognised institution in the Roman Church at the time, it
was subordinated to a hierarchy of secular clergy; and a church which
not only possessed monasticism as a feature, but was so entirely
monastic in its character that its whole clergy were embraced within its
rule, not only was alien to the Roman system, but necessarily produced
peculiarities of jurisdiction and clerical life which were repugnant to
it. Hence, where the Roman Church exercised a direct influence upon this
Monastic Church, its tendency necessarily was to produce a return to the
older system of a hierarchy of secular clergy, with monachism as a
separate institution existing within the church, but not pervading the
whole. It was this influence, which had been brought to bear upon the
church of the Picts, originating with Wilfrid of York and affecting them
through their connection with the Angles of Northumbria, that eventually
severed their connection with the Columban church, and brought to an end
the primacy of Iona over the churches of Pictland. We have hitherto
regarded this church as identified with that founded by Columba in Iona,
and, as such, intimately connected with the Church of Ireland. We have
also found the interpretation of the peculiarities of the former in the
institutions of the latter, and the leading facts of its history in the
Irish Annals. We must now, however, treat the history of the church in
the eastern districts, which formed the territory of the Picts,
separately from that of Iona; and as, with this connection with the
Irish Church, we likewise lose the invaluable guidance of Bede, we must
find our main source of information in an analysis of those
ecclesiastical traditions applicable to this period, which have come
down to us. We have already seen, from the narrative of Bede, how
Naiton, as he calls him, or Nectan, king of the Picts who inhabit the
northern parts of Britain, taught by frequent study of the
ecclesiastical writings, renounced the error by which he and his nation
had till then been held in relation to the observance of Easter, and
submitted, together with his people, to celebrate the Catholic time of
our Lord’s resurrection; how he sought assistance from the nation of the
Angles, and sent messengers to Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of
Jarrow, desiring him to write him a letter containing arguments by the
help of which he might the more powerfully confute those that persevered
in keeping Easter out of the due time, and also concerning the form and
manner of the tonsure for distinguishing the clergy; how he prayed to
have architects sent him to build a church in his nation after the Roman
manner, which he promised to dedicate to St. Peter; how, when he
received the letter he requested, he had it read in his presence and
that of the most learned men, and interpreted into his own language, and
issued a decree that, together with his nation, he would observe this
time of Easter, and that the coronal tonsure should be received by all
the clergy in his nation; how this decree, by public command, was sent
throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and
observed; and how all the ministers of the altar and monks adopted the
coronal tonsure, and the nation was placed under the patronage and
protection of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. We have also
learned from the Irish Annals that this powerful confutation, like many
other efforts to enforce uniformity, resulted in the resistance of the
Columban monks and their expulsion from his territories.
[Sidenote: Legend of Bonifacius.]
The legend which mainly deals with this revolution is that of
Bonifacius, preserved in the Aberdeen Breviary; and his leading
statements harmonise so well with Bede’s narrative, and are so much
supported by the dedications of the churches mentioned in connection
with it, that we may safely import them into the history of this
period.[432] It is thus told:—Bonifacius was an Israelite by birth,
descended from the sister of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and born in
Bethsaida. In his thirty-sixth year he was ordained priest by John,
Bishop and Patriarch of Jerusalem. When he attained his forty-sixth year
he went to Rome, where he was made a bishop and cardinal, and then, by
the election of all the cardinals, he was elevated to the papacy. He
then called some of his brethren into the oratory, and informed them
that he proposed to set forth on a mission to the ends of the earth, for
the love of God and those people who dwelt in the northern regions
beyond the bounds of Europe. They said, ‘Send religious men, as your
predecessors Celestinus and Gregorius sent Palladius, Patricius and
Augustinus.’ But Bonifacius replied that it had been revealed to him by
St. Peter, in an angelic vision, that he should undertake this mission
himself. Accordingly, after due preparation, he shortly afterwards set
out from Rome. The mission consisted of Bonifacius, and of Benedictus,
Servandus, Pensandus, Benevolus, Madianus, and Principuus, bishops and
most devout men, who devotedly followed him, and two distinguished
virgins, abbesses, Crescentia and Triduana; seven presbyters, seven
deacons, seven sub-deacons, seven acolytes, seven exorcists, seven
lectors, seven doorkeepers, and a great multitude of God-fearing men and
women. They had a prosperous journey and voyage, and arrived in
Pictavia, sailed up the Scottish Sea or Firth of Forth, and proceeded as
far as Restinoth. Here they were met by Nectan, king of the Picts, at
the head of his army, who, seeing such a multitude of strangers, was
struck with astonishment, but finally, with all his nobles and officers,
received the sacrament of baptism at the hands of Bonifacius and his
bishops. The king then dedicated the place of his baptism to the Holy
Trinity, and gave it to Bonifacius, who then performed the usual
miracles, ‘wrote one hundred and fifty books, and founded as many
churches, with an equal number of bishops and a thousand presbyters, and
converted and baptized thirty-six thousand men and women; and finally,
in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on the 17th day before the kalends
of April, or 16th March, departed to Christ.’ Another form of the legend
states that his name was Albanus Kiritinus, surnamed Bonifacius; that he
founded a church at the mouth of the river Gobriat, or Gowry, in
Pictavia, after baptizing Nectanus the king; that he preached sixty
years to the Picts and Scots, and, at the age of eighty, died at
Rosmarkyn, and was buried in the church of St. Peter.
These legends are borne out by the dedications, as we find that the
churches of Restennot, near Forfar, and Invergowry, at the mouth of the
water of Gowry, are dedicated to St. Peter; and Rosemarky, on the north
shore of the Moray Firth, an old Columban monastery founded by Lugadius,
or Moluog, of Lismore, was dedicated to St. Peter and Bonifacius; while
the church of Scone, the chief seat of the kingdom, was dedicated to the
Holy Trinity. The legends are obviously connected with the revolution by
which King Nectan and the entire nation of the Picts conformed to Rome.
The earlier part of the narrative is of course fictitious, and
Bonifacius is here erroneously identified with one of the Bonifaces who
occupied the papal throne in the seventh century. The object of this was
no doubt to make more prominent and direct his character as a missionary
in the interest of the Roman party. He was in reality a bishop from that
party in the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome. When Adamnan went
to Ireland and held the synod in which his law was promulgated in the
year 697, its canons were signed, among others, by _Cuiritan epscop_, or
Bishop Cuiritan, and also by _Bruide mac Derili Ri Cruithintuath_, or
king of Pictavia, the brother and immediate predecessor of Nectan; and
in the old Irish Calendars he appears on the 16th March as _Curitan
epscoip ocus abb Ruis mic bairend_, that is, Curitan, bishop and abbot
of Rosmarkyn.[433] This is also the day in which Bonifacius appears in
the Scotch Calendars, and their identity seems beyond doubt. It is
equally clear that the legend also shows the introduction of a body of
secular clergy into the kingdom of the Picts, and, as we found that at
the council on the banks of the Nidd, at which it was resolved to
appoint Cuthbert bishop, and to place him at Lindisfarne, while Eata was
transferred to Hexham, a body of seven bishops were present and
confirmed the arrangement, so here the mission is composed of seven
bishops, with an equal number of presbyters, deacons, sub-deacons,
acolytes, exorcists, lectors and doorkeepers—that is, the entire
hierarchy of the secular clergy of Rome with its minor orders. Wynton,
in his notice of Boniface, well expresses this—
‘Sevyn hundyr wynter and sextene,
Quhen lychtare wes the Virgyne clene,
Pape off Rome than Gregore
The Secund, quham off yhe herd before,
And Anastas than Empryowre,
The fyrst yhere off hys honowre,
Nectan Derly wes than regnand
Owre the Peychtis in Scotland.
In Ros he fowndyd Rosmarkyne,
That dowyd wes wytht kyngys syne,
And made was a place Cathedrale
Be-north Murrave severalle;
Quhare chanownys ar seculare
Wndyr Saynt Bonyface lyvand thare.’[434]
[Sidenote: Legend of Fergusianus.]
Another legend which appears to belong to this period, and which is
likewise confirmed by the dedications, is that of Fergus, or
Fergusianus. His story is this: He was for many years a bishop in
Ireland, and then came to the western parts of Scotland, to the confines
of Strogeth, where he founded three churches. Thence he went to
Cathania, or Caithness, where for some time he occupied himself in
converting the barbarous people. After that he visited Buchan, resting
in a place called Lungley, where he built a basilica, which still
exists, dedicated to himself. Then he came to Glammis, where he
consecrated a tabernacle to the God of Jacob, and where he died full of
years. His bones were afterwards enshrined in a shrine of marble, and
his head taken with all due honour to the monastery of Scone, where many
miracles were performed.[435] Now, we find that among the bishops who
were present at the council held at Rome in the year 721, and signed the
canons, is ‘Fergus the Pict, a bishop of Ireland,’[436] who is no doubt
our Fergus before he passed over to Pictland in Britain, which appears
to have been his native country; and his appearance at the council of
Rome shows that he belonged to the party who had conformed to the Roman
Church. At Strageath, in the district of Stratherne, and in the
immediate neighbourhood, are three churches dedicated to St.
Patrick—those of Strageath, Blackford and Dolpatrick—which shows that
their founder had come from Ireland. In Caithness, the churches of Wick
and Halkirk are dedicated to St. Fergus. In Buchan the village called in
the legend Lungley is now named St. Fergus, and the neighbouring parish
of Inverugie, now called Peterhead, is dedicated to St. Peter. At
Glammis we have St. Fergus’ cave and St. Fergus’ well, and the statement
that his head was preserved at Scone is confirmed by an entry in the
accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, of a payment by James IV. for a
silver case for it.
[Sidenote: Churches dedicated to St. Peter.]
The distribution of the churches among the Picts which were dedicated to
St. Peter will show the extent to which the country at this time adopted
him as their patron. Among the southern Picts we have Invergowry,
Tealing, Restennot, and Meigle. Among the northern Picts we have in
Aberdeen and Banff, Cultyr, Fivy and Inverugie; and in Moray and Ross,
Drumdelgy, Ruthven, Glenbucket, Belty, Inverawen, Duffus and Rosemarky.
King Nectan himself is said by the Irish annalist Tighernac to have
become a cleric in the year 724,[437] and probably retired to the church
which he had built after the Roman manner by the architects sent him
from Northumbria, and which, as he had promised to dedicate that church
to St. Peter, must have been one of these we have named, either
Restennot or Rosemarky.
[Sidenote: Second influence: the Anachoretical life.]
These legends having thus so far indicated the external influence which
led to the introduction of the secular clergy into the church among the
Picts, we must now advert to another and more powerful influence of an
opposite kind, which arose within the Monastic Church itself, and
equally tended to break in upon the monastic character of that church.
This influence was that increasing asceticism which led the monks to
forsake the cœnobitical life for the solitary cell of the anchorite, and
induced those who wished to pass from a secular to a religious life to
prefer this more ascetic form of it. This form of the religious life had
long existed in the Christian Church, and, from a very early period,
there prevailed a feeling that the solitary life in the desert, or in
the anchorite’s cell, was a higher form of the religious life than that
afforded by the cœnobitical life of the monastery. Thus St. Jerome,
writing in the fourth century, tells us that ‘there were in Egypt three
kinds of monks. First, the Cœnobites, whom they call in the Gentile
tongue Sausses but whom we may term those living in common. Secondly,
the Anchorites, who live alone in desert places, and are so called as
living apart from men; and, thirdly, that kind which are called
Remoboth, the worst and most neglected;’[438] and John Cassian, a native
of Scythia, who founded two monasteries at Marseilles, one for men and
the other for virgins, and died about the year 440, writing what he
terms ‘Conferences with the Monks,’ speaks, in his eighteenth, of the
different sorts of monks in his day. He likewise distinguishes them into
three sorts. First the Cœnobites, who live in common, under an abbot,
imitating the life of the apostles. Second, Anchorites, who, after they
have been instructed and educated in monasteries, withdraw into the
deserts. The authors of this order were St. Paul the hermit and St.
Anthony. And third, the Sarabaites, who pretended to retire from the
world, and joined themselves together by two or three in a company, to
live after their own humour, not being subject to any man. He looks upon
these but as a corruption of the monastic state rather than a distinct
order. He adds to these a fourth sort of monks, made of those who, not
being able to endure the monastic life in a convent, retreated alone
into certain cells to live more at liberty, but praises the second as
the most perfect. In his nineteenth conference, an abbot called John,
who had been an anchorite and had entered a monastery, is asked which of
the two orders was to be preferred, and replies that he thought the life
of the cœnobites best for those who were not absolutely perfect, and
shows that none but those who have attained to a degree of eminent
perfection are capable of living the life of a hermit.[439] Another of
these ancient fathers, Nilus, who had betaken himself to a solitary life
in the desert of Sinai, and died about the year 451, writes a treatise
upon the question whether the life of the Anchorites, or Hermits, whom
he also calls Hesycasts, or Quietists, who dwell in solitude, is to be
preferred before the life of those religious who dwell in cities, and
states that this is a question about which the judgment of spiritual men
is much divided. Those who prefer the religious who live in communities
in cities before the anchorites, say that they have more worth because
they meet with more opposition; whereas those who live in solitude being
quiet and not subject to temptations, have not so much virtue; to which
Nilus replies that there are as many temptations in solitude as in
cities, and that the reason why some persons argue so is because they
regard outward sins only, not considering that there are infinite
temptations and spiritual sins which encounter us as well in privacy as
in cities; and he therefore supports the opinion that the solitary life
is the higher form of the religious life.[440] Isidore of Seville, too,
in the seventh century, distinguishes between the different kinds of
monks, and says that the Cœnobites are they that live in common, like
those in the days of the apostles, who sold their goods and had all
things in common; the Hermits, they that withdraw into desert places and
vast solitudes in imitation of Elias and John the Baptist, delighting,
with a wonderful contempt of the world, in total solitude; and the
Anchorites, they who, having perfected themselves in cœnobitical life,
shut themselves up in cells apart from the aspect of men, inaccessible
to all, and living in the sole contemplation of God.[441] But Bede, who
was a Benedictine monk, seems also to regard the life of an anchorite as
a higher form of religious life, when in his History he says of Cudberct
on his retiring to the island of Farne, that, ‘advancing in the merits
of his devout intention, he proceeded even to the adoption of a hermit
life of solitary contemplation and secret silence;’ and, in his Life,
that ‘he was now permitted to ascend to the leisure of divine
speculation, and rejoiced that he had now reached the lot of those of
whom we sing in the Psalm, The saints shall go from virtue to virtue;
the God of Gods shall be seen in Sion.’[442]
The preference for this mode of life, as the highest form of a religious
life that could be attained, seems to have arisen from an overstrained
interpretation of some passages of Scripture. Thus Bede, in the
beginning of his Life of Cudberct, tells us that he ‘would hallow its
commencement by quoting the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who, in
lauding the state of the perfection of the anchorite, says, “It is good
for a man who hath borne the yoke from his youth; he shall sit alone and
keep silent, because he shall raise himself above himself.”’[443] But
the preference of the solitary life as the highest form of asceticism
seems to have been mainly founded upon two passages in the New
Testament. One is that passage in the Epistle of St. James in which he
winds up his exhortation by saying, ‘Pure religion and undefiled, before
God and the Father, is to visit the widows and fatherless in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world;’ or, as a
literal rendering of the old Latin version would be, ‘Pure and
immaculate religious service towards God and the Father is this, to
visit the infants and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself
immaculate from this world.’[444] By an overstrained interpretation of
this passage it was assumed that a person could only keep himself
immaculate from the world by withdrawing himself from it altogether, and
from all association with his fellow-creatures, except in works of
benevolence to those in distress; and that this was a form of religion
peculiarly acceptable to God and the Father. The other passage is that
in the First Epistle of St. Peter, where it is said, ‘But ye are a
chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar
people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you
out of darkness into His marvellous light; which in times past were not
a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy,
but now have obtained mercy. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers
and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul.’[445] And this was interpreted to mean that those who passed their
lives in mortifying the body and praising God by singing the psalter, in
living in this world as strangers from all society and as pilgrims to a
better world, were a peculiar people and entitled to call themselves the
people of God.
[Sidenote: Anchorites called _Deicolæ_ or God-worshippers.]
They thus came to the conclusion that a solitary life passed in devotion
and self-mortification, accompanied by acts of benevolence to the sick
and bereaved, was a ‘cultus’ or ‘religio’ peculiarly acceptable to God
and the Father; and hence they were called, if they did not call
themselves so, _Deicolæ_, or God-worshippers, in contrast to
_Christicolæ_, the name applied in a general sense to all Christians,
and, in a narrower application, to monks leading a cœnobitical life.
Thus in the Life of St. Anthony, written by Athanasius, bishop of
Alexandria, who introduced monachism into the Western Church, and
translated into Latin by Evagrius, a priest of Antioch, in the year 358,
we find it stated that ‘the neighbours and the monks whom he often
visited, seeing St. Anthony, called him a _Deicola_, and, indulging in
the expression of natural affection, they loved him, some as a son,
others as a brother.’[446] Again, Martinus, a bishop, who terms himself
Scotus, or a native of Ireland, writing to Miro, king of Gallicia, in
the sixth century, probably about the year 560, regarding ‘the rules of
an honest life,’ says that he will not urge him to follow ‘those more
arduous and perfect rules which are practised by a few very excellent
_Deicolæ_.’[447] Columbanus, too, in his second instruction or sermon to
his monks, says, ‘Whosoever, therefore, willeth to be made a habitation
for God, let him strive to become lowly and quiet, that not by glibness
of words, nor by suppleness of body, but by the reality of his humility
he may be recognised as a _Deicola_; for goodness of heart requireth not
the feigned religion of words;’[448] and a disciple of Columbanus, who
followed out this life after his master had been driven out of Luxeuil
with his monks, retired to a solitary spot called Luthra in the midst of
a forest, now Lure in the district of Besançon, ‘But his virtues having
attracted religious men to him from all quarters, he formed a community
of monks and erected two oratories; and, after governing his monastery
for several years, he appointed one of his disciples abbot in his stead,
and again withdrew to a solitary cell, where he devoted himself to
divine contemplation till his death about 625. This man bears no other
name in the calendars than _Deicola_, and his memory is still held in
high estimation by the people of that country, who call him Saint
Die.’[449]
[Sidenote: Anchorites called the people of God.]
We find, too, these solitaries also called the people of God. In the
ancient Life of St. Patrick written by Probus, he tells us that, after
Patrick had passed four years with St. Martin of Tours, where he was
trained in monastic life, an angel appeared to him and said, ‘Go to the
people of God, that is, to the hermits and solitaries, with naked feet,
and live with them, that you may be tried for some time; and he went
into a solitude, and remained with the hermits eight years.’[450]
The conception of this ‘cultus’ of God is well expressed in a passage of
Simeon of Durham, who, in his History of the Kings, under the year 781,
says, some 250 years after, of a certain Dregmo, in the territory of the
church at Hexham, that ‘he greatly feared God and diligently devoted
himself, as far as his means allowed, to the exercise of works of
charity, leading a life in all respects apart from the customs of his
countrymen—a man of remarkable simplicity and innocence, and of profound
devotion and reverence towards the saints of God; on which account his
neighbours held him in great honour, and called him a true
God-worshipper.’[451]
In the seventh century attempts were made by several councils to bring
the solitaries more under the monastic rule. By the fifth canon of the
Council of Toledo, held in 646, it was provided that ‘well-instructed
monks alone should be allowed to live separate from a cloister as
recluses, and become the trainers of others in the higher forms of
ascetic life. Those recluses and wanderers who are unworthy must be
brought within a cloister, and in future no one must be devoted to this
highest form of the ascetic life, as a recluse, who had not first been
trained in a monastery to the knowledge and practice of the monastic
life.’[452] By the Council of Trullo, held in 692, it was provided, by
canon 41, that those who would live separate in their own cells must
have first passed three years in a monastery, and that any one who has
once withdrawn himself to a solitary cell must not again leave it; and
by canon 42 that, as there are hermits who come to the towns in black
clothing and long hair, and associate with secular persons, it is
ordered that such persons shall be tonsured and enter a monastery,
wearing the monastic dress. If they will not do this, they must be
expelled from the town.[453]
[Sidenote: A.D. 747.
Order of Secular Canons instituted.]
Such attempts, however, seem to have had little effect, and the next
century was to see the Anchorites and Recluses, who lived apart from the
monastic rule, and practised what they considered the highest form of
asceticism, and the secular clergy, who had never come under the
monastic rule, but were subject only to the general canon-law of the
church, brought more together, a tendency to which indeed had probably
already manifested itself in the end of the previous century, which the
forty-second canon of the Council of Trullo was designed to check. For
though nothing could be more opposed in spirit, than the secular life of
the ordinary clergy on the one hand and the ascetic life of the
anchorites on the other, forming, as it were, the opposite poles of the
ecclesiastical system, yet they had one feature in common—that both
lived separately, in opposition to the cœnobitical life of the monks.
The new institution which thus brought them together was that of the
secular canons, founded by Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, in the year 747.
His rule was at first intended for his clergy of Metz alone, with a view
of leading them to adopt a more regular life in the ecclesiastical sense
of the term. This rule consists of thirty-four chapters. By the third he
directs that the canon clerics shall live together in a cloister, and
shall all sleep in one dormitory, with the exception of those to whom
the bishop shall give permission to sleep separately in their own
dwellings within the cloister; that no woman or layman is to enter the
cloister without an order from the bishop, the archdeacon, or the
‘primicerius’; that they shall eat in the same refectory, that laics
shall only be allowed to remain in the cloister as long as they have
work, and that those living separately within the cloister must live
alone and have no other cleric with them. By the ninth chapter he
enjoins them to perform the bodily labours in common as well as in
private. By the thirty-first he enjoins his clerics to give to the
church what real property they have, retaining the income only, but
gives them leave to reserve to themselves their moveable property, for
almsgiving, and to dispose of it as they please by their wills.[454]
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ brought under canonical rule.]
The object of this rule was certainly to bring the secular clergy of
this town to live a cœnobitical life, but with such relaxations as would
both allow it to be considerably modified towards certain of the body,
and to permit the recluses, though not expressly named, to be included
within it; but the new canonical life became so popular, that the rule
was revised and enlarged, so as to adapt it to the state of the clergy
generally, and enable it to be extended over the whole church. This
revised rule consists of eighty-six chapters. By the thirteenth it is
provided that within the cloisters there shall be dormitories,
refectories, cellars and other habitations; that all shall sleep in one
dormitory, living as brethren in one society, except those to whom the
bishop shall give leave to sleep separately on separate couches in their
own dwellings in the cloister, with seniors among them to watch over
them; and that no female or laic shall enter the cloister. Chapter
thirty-nine bears that, as there is an evil zeal of bitterness which
separates from God and leads to destruction, so there is a good zeal
which separates from vice and leads to God and eternal life: therefore
they ought to exercise zeal with the most fervent love, as servants of
God (_Servi Dei_). The eighty-first chapter, however, deals directly
with the _Deicolæ_, with the view of bringing them under the canonical
rule. It consists of ‘the epistle of a certain _Deicola_, sent in the
name of Christ to the priests and clerics for their instruction and
exhortation;’ and it is addressed ‘to the beloved priests in the
churches of Christ, the bishops and all the clergy therein everywhere,
and their servants, and to all the _Deicolæ_ living in the whole
world.’[455] He begs of them that, ‘living justly, piously and holily,
they should show a good example to others, and live with soul, heart and
body under the canonical rule.’ He exhorts ‘all clerics under them to
give humble obedience, and endeavour to fulfil the canonical rule
without murmuring, serving the Lord willingly; seeing that every man
ought to be subject to the higher powers and those put over them, how
much more should they, as servants of God (_Servi Dei_), humbly obey
their provosts?’ He finally exhorts them to be mindful ‘of the canonical
rules, and to have their precepts always before their eyes.’[456] By the
General Council held at Aix-la-Chapelle in 816 and 817, this canonical
rule was adopted, and a number of canons were passed to give effect to
it, with some modifications. They begin with the 114th canon. The 117th
canon provides that each bishop must see that the cloister in which his
clerics live is enclosed with a strong wall; the 120th, that those
clerics who possess property of their own and an income from the church
shall receive from the community their daily food only, with a share of
the oblations. Those who have no private means are entirely supported
and clothed. By the 135th, the boys and youths who are educated in the
canonry shall be well cared for and instructed, be placed under a senior
canon and dwell together in the upper floor of a house. By the 141st,
each bishop must provide a hospital for the poor and strangers, and each
cleric shall give the tenth of what he received for its support. By the
142d, canons are allowed to have separate dwellings, and proper places
shall be provided for the aged and the sick within the canonry; and by
the 144th, women must not enter the dwellings and the cloister, with the
exception of the church.[457]
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ in the Saxon Church.]
In the early English Church we find the name _Deicola_ in a Saxon form
applied to a community of solitaries. We find it stated in the
Peterborough MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in the year 655, that
‘Peada, king of the Mercians, and Oswiu, the brother of King Osuald,
came together and said that they would rear a monastery to the glory of
Christ and the honour of St. Peter; and they did so, and gave it the
name of Medeshamstede,’ now Peterborough. In 657 the monastery was
finished, and consecrated by Deusdedit, archbishop of Canterbury, in the
presence of King Wulfhere, the brother and successor of King Peada, and
his earls and thanes. There were also present four bishops, and Wilfrid,
who was then only a priest; and the king endowed it. Then ‘the abbot
desired that he would grant him that which he would desire of him, and
the king granted it to him. “I have here,” he said, “God-fearing monks,
who would pass their lives in an anchoretage, if they knew where. But
here is an island, which is called Ancarig,” now Thorney Isle, “and I
will crave this—that we may there build a monastery to the glory of St.
Mary, that they may there dwell who may desire to lead their lives in
peace and in rest.”’ The king accordingly grants the request, and endows
this monastery also.[458] The expression _Gode-frihte_, or God-fearing,
here applied to these anchorite monks, is obviously the Saxon equivalent
of _Deicola_. In the following century the canonical rule was introduced
into England, as we find in a legatine synod held in Northumberland, in
the year 787, that by the fourth canon bishops are required to take care
that all canons live canonically, and all monks or nuns regularly—that
is, according to monastic rule;[459] and that the title of
God-worshippers passed down to the canon clerics, at least to those who
lived separately, appears from this, that, when King Athelstan was on
his march against the Scots in 936, he halted at York, and there
besought of the ministers of St. Peter’s church, who were then called
_Colidei_, to offer up their prayers on behalf of himself and his
expedition. They are said to be ‘men of holy life and honest
conversation, then styled _Colidei_, who maintained a number of poor
people, and withal had but little whereon to live.’ ‘It would appear,’
says Dr. Reeves, ‘that these _Colidei_ were the officiating clergy of
the cathedral church of St. Peter’s at York in 946, and that they
discharged the double function of divine service and eleemosynary
entertainment;’[460] in other words, they were canon clerics, and the
name _Colidei_ is merely an inversion of that of _Deicolæ_. Those of
Canterbury we find called in a charter by King Ethelred, in 1006,
_cultores clerici_, or cleric God-worshippers, the word _Dei_ being
evidently implied.[461]
[Sidenote: Anchoretical life in Ireland and Scotland.]
In the early Monastic Church of Ireland, this tendency to prefer a
solitary life, as a higher form of the religious life, developed itself
at a very early period. It seems to have assumed two different aspects.
One when the abbot or one of the brethren of the monastery retired for a
time to a separate cell, for solitary prayer, or for penitential
exercises, during which time he held no intercourse with the other
inmates of the monasteries. The cells adopted for this purpose were
usually those primitive dwellings called by the Irish _Clochans_, built
of unmortared stone, with walls of great thickness, circular in shape,
with a dome-shaped roof, somewhat of a beehive form, and hence often
called beehive cells. When used for such retirement they were called
_Carcair_, or prison cells. Thus, in an old poem attributed to Cuimin of
Coindeire, he says of Enda, who founded the monastery on the principal
of the Arann Isles:—
Enda of the high piety loved
In Ara, victory with sweetness,
A _carcair_ of hard narrow stone,
To bring all unto heaven.[462]
Of Ultan of Arbreccan he says—
Ultan loves his children;
A _carcair_ for his lean side,
And a bath in cold water
In the sharp wind he loved.[463]
Of Molaissi of Devenish he says—
Molaissi of the lake loves
To be in a _carcair_ of hard stone.[464]
Adamnan, too, tells us of _Feargna_, or Virgnous, who, ‘after having
lived for many years without reproach in obedience among the brethren,
led an anchoretic life for other twelve years, as a victorious soldier
of Christ, in the abode of the anchorites in Muirbulcmar.’[465] This
was, he also tells us, in the island of Hinba, which can be identified
with _Eilean na Naomh_, one of the Garveloch isles, and here, in this
solitary isle where there is little to disturb them, we find the remains
of this abode of the anchorites in connection with other remains which
are evidently the foundations of an early monastic establishment. It
consists of two circular dome-shaped buildings joined together, built of
uncemented stone. The larger one is internally fourteen feet in
diameter; the other, a part of the beehive roof of which still remains,
is about a foot less. The two buildings communicate with each other by
means of a square-shaped doorway through the points of contact, and the
larger one with the outside by another doorway of a similar kind facing
south-west.[466]
The other form of this solitary life was one in which the inmate of a
monastery withdrew from it altogether, and sought out some remote and
desert spot or island in which he might pass the rest of his life in
total solitude. Such retreats were called emphatically ‘Deserts.’ Of
this desire, which with many became almost a passion, Adamnan gives us
an instance in Cormac ua Leathan. Adamnan calls him ‘a truly pious man,
who no less than three times went in search of a desert in the ocean,
but did not find it;’ and he says Columba thus prophesied of him: ‘In
his desire to find a desert, Cormac is this day, for a second time, now
embarking from that district which lies on the other side of the river
Moda, and is called Eirris Domno; nor even this time shall he find what
he seeks, and that for no other fault than that he has irregularly
allowed to accompany him on the voyage a monk who is going away from his
own proper abbot without obtaining his consent.’[467] Again he tells us
that Cormac made another attempt to discover a desert in the ocean, and
Columba, who was then at the court of King Brude, says to the king in
the presence of the ruler of the Orkneys, ‘Some of our brethren have
lately set sail, and are anxious to discover a desert in the pathless
sea. Should they happen, after many wanderings, to come to the Orkney
islands, do thou instruct their chief, whose hostages are in thy hand,
that no evil befall them within his dominions;’ and Adamnan tells us he
did arrive in the Orkneys. On his third voyage, Cormac sailed for
fourteen days and nights due north, before a south wind, without seeing
land; and, when the wind changed to the north, he returned again to
Iona,[468] without having in any of his three voyages succeeded in
discovering such a ‘desert’ as he sought for.
[Sidenote: Anchorites called _Deoraidh De_ or God’s pilgrims.]
Those who devoted themselves to such a solitary life were said to give
themselves up to God,[469] and the name of _Deoraidh_, literally
strangers, was applied to them as ‘strangers and pilgrims’ in the
religious sense of the term, and ‘_Deoraidh De_,’ or pilgrims of
God.[470] But their connection with the monastery from which they
emerged was not entirely severed; for, as we have seen, when the abbacy
became vacant, the _Deoraidh De_, or pilgrim, was entitled to succeed in
the fifth place; and the Brehon Laws provide that if a bishop commit
certain offences, ‘the Ferleginn, or lector, shall be installed in the
bishopric, and the bishop shall go into the hermitage or pilgrimage of
God’ (_Aibilteoiracht no in Deoruighecht De_).[471]
[Sidenote: The third order of Irish saints Eremitical.]
Towards the end of the sixth century this passion for a solitary life
had increased so much that it tended greatly to break up the monastic
system, and became embodied in what was termed the third order of
saints; and, while the second order expresses a purely monastic church,
this third order which succeeded it, was Eremitical. ‘It was,’ says the
Catalogue, ‘of this sort. They were holy presbyters and a few bishops;
one hundred in number; who dwelt in desert places, and lived on herbs
and water and the alms of the faithful. They shunned private property;
they despised all earthly things, and wholly avoided all whispering and
backbiting; and they had different rules and masses, and different
tonsures—for some had the coronal and others the hair; and a different
paschal festival—for some celebrated the Resurrection on the fourteenth
moon, or sixteenth, with hard intentions. These lived during four
reigns, and continued to that great mortality,’ that is, from about 600
to 666. In 634, as we have seen, the church of the southern half of
Ireland had conformed to Rome, while the northern Irish were not brought
over to the Roman system till the end of the century. What, therefore,
is alluded to, when they are said to have different masses and different
tonsures, is that this order consisted of two parties—one belonging to
the southern Irish which had adopted the coronal tonsure and the Roman
method of calculating Easter; while the other in these respects adhered
to the customs of their fathers. They appear at this time not only to
have lived a hermit life in the desert, but to have founded eremitical
establishments, where a number of hermits lived in separate cells within
the same enclosures. To both the name of Desert or _Diseart_ was usually
given; and Colgan mentions no fewer than ten establishments, and the
Annals of the Four Masters fourteen, the names of which commence with
the word _Diseart_.
Among those who belonged to the party who adhered to the customs of
their fathers was that ‘Beccan Solitarius,’ or the Solitary, to whom,
along with Segine of Iona, Cumine in 634 addressed his letter regarding
the proper time for keeping Easter; and it shows the importance now
attached to this mode of life, that he is placed on the same platform
with the abbot of Iona. Tighernac records, in the year 677, the death of
‘Beccan Ruimean in an island of Britain;’ and he appears in the
Martyrologies as ‘Becan Ruim.’[472] His hermitage was therefore in one
of the Western Isles; and what island that was we learn from his epithet
of Ruimean or Ruim, that is, of the island of Rum. The names of seven
bishops and eight presbyters who belonged to this order are given in the
Catalogue, but they were mainly connected with the party which had
conformed to Rome. The first of the presbyters named is Fechin of Fore;
he is the Vigeanus of the Scottish Calendar, to whom the church of
Arbroath was dedicated, and probably that of Ecclefechan, or Fechan’s
church, in Dumfriesshire. In an island on the west coast of Ireland
called Ardoilean, or High Island, an uninhabited and almost inaccessible
island off the coast of Connemara, is one of the most interesting and
best preserved specimens of these Anchoretical or Eremitical
establishments, which is attributed to this Fechin. It consists of a
_Cashel_, or uncemented stone wall, nearly circular, enclosing an area
of one hundred and eight feet in diameter. Within this enclosure there
is an oratory, one of the widest of these ancient structures, measuring
internally twelve feet by ten, and ten feet in height. The doorway is
two feet wide and four feet six inches high, having inscribed on its
horizontal a cross similar to one on the lintel of the doorway of St.
Fechin’s church at Fore. On the east side of the oratory is an ancient
stone sepulchre like a Pagan kistvaen. There are also within the
enclosure two _clochans_, or dome-roofed cells—one externally round, but
internally a square of nine feet, and seven feet six inches high. The
other is circular, and internally seven feet by six, and eight feet
high. The doorways are two feet four in width, and only three feet six
in height. On the other side are a number of smaller cells, about six
feet long by three wide and four feet high, and are mostly covered with
rubbish.[473] There are no buildings adapted for a cœnobitical life; and
it is probably a good specimen of the eremitical establishments of this
third order of the saints.
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ termed in Ireland _Ceile De_.]
The ancient document termed the Catalogue of the Saints, which affords
us such a valuable clue to the main characteristics of the Irish Church
during these different periods, leaves us at the period of the great
pestilence in the year 666; but we find that after that date the
nomenclature of the Continental anchorites begins to appear, in an Irish
form, attached to the eremitical class in the Irish Church. In lieu of
the term _Deicolæ_, which as we have seen, was from the earliest period
the designation of those who adopted what they considered the higher
form of religious life, peculiarly the ‘cultus’ of God and the Father,
we find these Irish anchorites having the term of _Ceile De_ applied to
them. These terms, though not etymologically equivalent, may be
considered as correlative,[474] and intended to represent the same
class; and as _Christicola_ becomes in Irish _Celechrist_, so _Deicola_
assumes in Irish the form of _Ceile De_.[475] There is a poem in the
Leabhar Breac attributed to St. Mochuda of Rathen, who died in 636,
which gives us a picture of the constituent elements of the Irish Church
at this period. It bears this title: ‘Here begins the rule of Mochuta of
Rathen, inculcating ten commandments upon every person;’ and consists of
nine sections. Of these, the title of the second is, ‘Of the occupations
of a bishop here;’ of the third, ‘Of the abbot of a church;’ of the
fourth, ‘Of the occupations of a priest;’ of the fifth, ‘Shouldst thou
be a person’s _anmchara_, or soul’s friend?’ of the sixth, ‘Of the
occupations of a monk;’ and of the seventh, ‘Of the _Cele De_, or of the
clerical recluse,’[476] thus distinguishing the _Cele De_ from the monk.
[Sidenote: _Deicolæ_ and _Ceile De_ show the same characteristics.]
These _Ceile De_, however, show precisely the same characteristics which
belonged to the _Deicolæ_ of the Continent. Like the _Deicolæ_, they
were Anchorites, for we find that, when the name of _Cele De_ appears as
a personal title, it is borne by one who had lived as a solitary in a
desert, or who is termed an Anchorite. Thus Angus the Hagiologist, who
founded a desert called after his name Disert Aengus, now Disert Enos,
is well known as Aengus _Cele De_; Comgan, whose death is recorded in
the Ulster Annals in 869 as ‘Comgan Fota, Anchorite of Tamhlacht,’
appears in the Calendar of Tamhlacht as ‘Comgan _Cele De_;’ and in the
earliest notice of the _Cele De_ at Clonmacnois, in 1031, we find that
Conn _nambocht_, or ‘of the poor,’ is termed Head of the _Cele De_ and
anchorite of Clonmacnois.[477] Again, like the _Deicolæ_, they are the
‘people of God.’ Thus the Ulster Annals tell us that in 921 ‘Armagh was
pillaged on the Saturday before St. Martin’s Day, which was the 10th of
November, by Gofrith, grandson of Ivar, and his army, who saved the
houses of prayer with their people of God, that is, _Cele De_, and their
sick, and the whole church town, except some houses which were burned
through neglect.’[478] Like the _Deicolæ_, they too claimed to be
strangers and pilgrims in the religious sense of the term; hence _Cele
De_ is occasionally used in the sense of stranger. Dr. Reeves gives us a
curious instance of this. In one of the Irish MSS. in the Bodleian
Library is an Irish translation of a Latin tract ‘de Bragmannis,’
containing a supposed correspondence between Alexander the Great and
Dindimus, king of the Brahmins. In this tract occurs the sentence, ‘We
are not, says Dindimus, inhabitants of this world, but _strangers_. Nor
did we come into this world that we might remain, but that we might pass
through. We hasten to the lares of our fathers,’ etc., which is thus
translated: ‘Not of the inhabitants of the present world are we, I tell
thee, O Alexander, said Dinnim; but _Cele De_ is our title. We do not
accept land unnecessarily in the world; for our patrimony is before us,
namely heaven, with its abodes and rewards.’[479] Thus fully expressing
the sentiment of the Brahmins being strangers and pilgrims in the same
sense as were the _Cele De_. In a lake in the county of Tipperary,
formerly called Lochcre, but afterwards Monaincha, there were two
islands: on one a monastery was founded in the sixth century; and on the
other, termed Innisnambeo, or the island of the living, a church was
founded in the eighth century by St. Elair, whose death is recorded on
7th September 807 as ‘anchorite and scribe of Loch Crea.’[480] This
island was visited by Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century, and
his description will show us the two churches—the ancient monastic
church and the anchorite church of the _Cele De_—side by side. He says,
‘In South Munster is a lake containing two isles; in the greater is a
church of the ancient religion; and in the lesser a chapel wherein a few
celibates, called _Cœlicolæ_ or _Colidei_, devoutly serve. Into the
greater no woman or any animal of the feminine gender ever enters but it
immediately dies. This has been proved by many experiments. In the
lesser isle no one can die; hence it is called “insula viventium,” or
the island of the living.’[481]
[Sidenote: _Ceile De_ brought under the canonical rule.]
Like the _Deicolæ_, they evidently came under the canonical rule. The
Irish Annals record the following singular entry:—‘In this year (811)
the _Cele De_ came over the sea with dry feet without a vessel; and a
written roll was given him from heaven, out of which he preached to the
Irish; and it was carried up again when the sermon was finished. This
ecclesiastic (literally son of the church) used to go every day
southwards across the sea, after finishing his sermon.’[482] Eliminating
the miraculous element, we have here an ecclesiastic, whose title is
given in the Irish form of _Cele De_, coming from the Continent with a
written precept, which he urged upon the Irish. This was sixty-eight
years after Saint Chrodegang framed his rule for the canonical life, and
also after the revised rule was framed containing the urgent appeal of
the _Deicola_ to all the _Deicolæ_ over the world, and only five years
before the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle. We may therefore reasonably
conclude that what the ecclesiastic called the _Cele De_ introduced into
Ireland was the canonical rule. There is also preserved in the Leabhar
Breac a prose rule attributed to Maelruain of Tamhlacht, who died in
792, and the title is ‘Here beginneth the rule of the _Cele De_, from
what Maelruain composed.’[483] This rule, however, was evidently not
intended for a monastic body, and shows more resemblance to the
canonical rule.[484] The _Cele De_ are only mentioned in a few places in
Ireland. Nine only are enumerated by Dr. Reeves. These are Tamhlacht, if
Maelruain’s establishment belongs to this order, Armagh, Clonmacnois,
Clondalkin, Monaincha, Devenish, Clones, Pubble and Scattery. These
could hardly then be the representatives of the great monastic church,
but must have been a new order which had not spread very widely among
the churches; and Dr. Reeves admits that ‘possibly the institution of
Maelruain may have borrowed from or possessed some features in common
with the order of canons; for certain it is that in after ages both the
Keledei of Scotland and the Colidei of Ireland exhibited in their
discipline the main characteristics of secular canons.’[485] Thus we
find he again says, ‘the _Cele De_ of Armagh occupying very much the
same position as the Colidei of York, as canons of the cathedral, and
latterly having the name Latinised into the same form.’
[Sidenote: _Cele De_, called _Keledei_ in Scotland, and first appear in
territory of southern Picts.]
[Sidenote: Legend of Saint Servanus.]
In Scotland the name takes the form of _Keledei_; and they make their
first appearance in the territory of the southern Picts after the
expulsion of the Columban monks. This we learn from the history of
Servanus or St. Serf. His life is found in apparent connection with that
of Kentigern, but the tale that it tells is very different from that
which we find in the lives of the latter saint. Its story is as follows:
There was a king in the land of Canaan called Obeth, son of Eliud, and
his wife was Alpia, daughter of a king of Arabia. As usual in such
legends, the worthy couple had no children for twenty years, and then,
after they had often prayed to God and offered alms, and the whole
people had fasted three days and nights, comes the usual vision, and
they have two sons. The name of the one was Generatius, that of the
other Malachias, or Servanus. He was called Servanus because he served
God day and night; and this name was given him by Magonius, bishop of
Alexandria, who baptized him. His father dies when he was seven years
old. He then studies in Alexandria for thirteen years, when he receives
from the bishop the monastic habit. After thirty years he receives
priest’s orders from the same bishop, and then returns to Canaan, where
all the Canaanites elect him bishop. Here he remains twenty years
erecting monasteries and churches. An angel then appears and gives him
the usual mandate to leave his country and kindred. He takes leave of
all the clerics and laics of his bishopric, and he goes with sixty
soldiers (that is, of Christ) to the banks of the Nile, crosses it and
goes to the Red Sea, which he crosses, as usual, dryshod, and thence to
Jerusalem, where he remains seven years as its patriarch, in room of
bishop Jacob, patriarch of Jerusalem. Here an angel takes him up Mount
Sion, and shows him the wood of the true cross, from which he cuts three
pastoral staves. Then he goes to Constantinople, where he remains three
years. Thence to Rome, where he finds the papal throne vacant, and he is
elected pope and fills the vacant chair of St. Peter seven years. The
angel again tells him he must go forth to distant lands. He goes forth
followed by a great number of clerics and people, men and women, and he
tells them to divide themselves into two parts, one of which must remain
in Rome, and the other accompany him on his mission. He crosses the
Alps, and after several adventures, arrives at the Ictian Sea or Straits
of Dover, with seven thousand soldiers (of Christ), and crosses it
dryshod. They then go from place to place till they arrive at the river
Forth. Adamnan, at this time an abbot in Scotland, meets him on
Inchkeith, and receives him with much honour. Servanus asks him how he
is to dispose of his family and companions. Adamnan tells him they may
occupy Fife, and from the Mount of the Britons to the Mount which is
called Okhel, that is, the Ochil Hills. Servanus then goes with a
hundred followers to Kinel, and throws across the sea his rod, which
becomes an apple-tree, called Morglas by the moderns. He then goes to
the place called Culenros, purposing to live there, and removes the
thorns and brushwood which abounded there. The king who then ruled over
the Picts, Brude, son of Dargart, is wroth because he resided there
without his leave, and sends to have him killed. There is then the usual
deadly sickness of the king, and the cure through the prayers of the
saint; and the king gives him the place where he inhabits as an offering
for ever. Servanus then founds and dedicates the church and cemetery at
Culenros, or Culross. Then he goes to Lochleven to see Adamnan, who
receives him there, and shows him an island in that lake well adapted
for his religious community which is granted him. Servanus founds a
monastery in that island in which he remains seven years, and from
thence he goes about the whole region of Fife, founding churches
everywhere. The other places mentioned in this life in connection with
him are the cave at Dysart on the north shore of the Firth of Forth,
where he had his celebrated discussion with the devil, and where the
memory of St. Serf is still held in honour; Tuligbotuan, or Tullybothy,
Tuligcultrin, or Tillicoultry, Alveth and Atheren, now Aithrey, all in
the district on the north side of the Forth, extending from Stirling to
Alloa. The only other place mentioned is his ‘Cella Dunenense,’ or cell
at Dunning in Stratherne, where he slew a dragon with his pastoral
staff, in a valley still called the Dragon’s Den. Finally, ‘after many
miracles, after divine virtues, after founding many churches, the saint,
having given his peace to the brethren, yielded up his spirit in his
cell at Dunning, on the first day of the kalends of July;’ and his
disciples and the people of the province take his body to Culenros, and
there, with psalms and hymns and canticles, he was honourably buried;
and so ends the life.[486] Here we have the same strange eastern origin,
the same journey to the west, the same occupation of the papal throne,
as we found in the legend of Boniface. This feature seems to
characterise the legends of those missionaries who promoted the great
change by which a new order of clergy, under the influence of the Roman
Church, superseded the Columban monks in the eastern and northern
districts of Scotland; and probably the invention had no greater motive
than to separate them, in a very marked manner, from the clergy of the
older church, and to give weight and authority to their promotion of the
influence of the Roman party.
[Sidenote: Servanus introduces _Keledei_, who are hermits.]
In this case, however, an older Irish document gives him a closer
connection with the west. In the tract on the mothers of the saints,
which is ascribed to Aengus the Culdee, in the ninth century, we are
told that ‘Alma, the daughter of the king of the _Cruithnech_,’ or
Picts, ‘was the mother of Serb, or Serf, son of Proc, king of Canaan, of
Egypt; and he is the venerable old man who possesses Cuilenros, in
Stratherne, in the Comgells between the Ochill Hills and the sea of
Giudan.’[487] Here Alpia, a name which has a very Pictish look, the
daughter of the king of Arabia, becomes Alma, the daughter of the king
of the Picts, and the husband of a Pictish princess must have belonged
to a race nearer home than the people of Canaan, here placed on the west
bank of the Nile and connected with Egypt. The Scotch part of the
legend, like that of Bonifacius, is supported by the dedications, all
the churches in the places mentioned in connection with him being
dedicated to St. Serf. The chronology of this part of the Life, too, is
quite consistent; we find no anachronisms in it, and there is not a
syllable about his being a disciple of Palladius or the teacher of
Kentigern. The Brude, son of Dargart, of the Life, may be identified
with Brude, son of Derile, who reigned from 697 to 706, and preceded
that Nectan, son of Derile, who expelled the Columban monks from his
kingdom. Brude appears in one of the chronicles, which seems to have
been connected with Lochleven, as Brude, son of Dargart; and the
chronicle adds, ‘in which time came Saint Servanus to Fife.’[488] Then
Adamnan, who is brought into such close connection with Servanus, died
in 704, only two years before the death of Brude; and there were, as we
know, the most friendly relations between them. Now there is in the
Chartulary of St. Andrews a memorandum of some early charters in the
Celtic period, and one of them is a grant by which ‘Brude, son of
Dergard, who is said by old tradition to have been the last of the kings
of the Picts’—which however he was not—‘gives the isle of Lochlevine to
the omnipotent God, and to Saint Servanus, and to the _Keledei hermits_
dwelling there, who are serving, and shall serve, God in that island.’
In another, ‘Macbeth, son of Finlach, and Gruoch, daughter of Bodhe,
king and queen of the Scots, give to God omnipotent, and the _Keledei_
of the said island of Lochlevine, Kyrkenes.’ And in a third, ‘Macbeth
gives to God and Saint Servanus of Lochlevyne, and the _hermits_ there
serving God, Bolgyne.’[489] We thus see that the establishment founded
by Servanus about the beginning of the eighth century was one of
hermits, and that they bear the name of _Keledei_. There is nothing
inconsistent with probability that they may have been introduced by
Adamnan, after he had himself conformed to Rome and was endeavouring to
bring over his brethren, and that that part of the Life which brings him
to the south shore of the Firth of Forth—in other words, from
Northumbria—when he is met in Inchkeith by Adamnan, may be perfectly
true.
[Sidenote: _Keledei_ of Glasgow, who were solitary clerics.]
Jocelyn of Furness, in his Life of Kentigern, tells us that he ‘joined
to himself a great many disciples whom he trained in the sacred
literature of the Divine law, and educated to sanctity of life by his
word and example. They all with a godly jealousy imitated his life and
doctrines, accustomed to fastings and sacred vigils at certain seasons,
intent on psalms and prayers and meditation on the Divine Word, content
with sparing diet and dress, occupied every day and hour in manual
labour. For, after the fashion of the primitive church under the
Apostles and their successors, possessing nothing of their own, and
living soberly, righteously, godly and continently, they dwelt, as did
Kentigern himself, in single cottages, from the time when they had
become mature in age and doctrine. Therefore these solitary clerics were
called in common speech _Calledei_.’[490] In assigning the _Calledei_,
or _Keledei_ of Glasgow to the time of Kentigern, Jocelyn is no doubt
guilty of as great an anachronism as when he assigned to him Servanus as
a teacher; and the statement belongs to the same period in Kentigern’s
supposed history, when he first became bishop of Glasgow; but this part
of his life is very problematical, ‘and the historical part of his
legend probably begins only when he returned from Wales after the battle
of Ardderyd. Here, however, he appears connected with the Monastic
Church of Wales, he is followed by six hundred and sixty-six of his
monks of Llanelwy, and Jocelyn tells us that these monks all rest, as
the inhabitants and countrymen assert, in the cemetery of the church of
the city of Glasgow.’ Jocelyn, however, wrote while there existed bodies
of _Keledei_ in Scotland, and he is no doubt reporting a genuine
tradition as to the original characteristics of the Culdean clergy
before they became canons. What he here describes is simply a community
of anchorites, or hermits. Servanus was contemporary with that Scottish
Sedulius, bishop of the Britons, who had conformed to Rome, and whom we
find bishop of the Strathclyde Britons after they had acquired their
independence and became freed from the yoke of the Angles. It is to this
period that these _Calledei_ of Glasgow properly belong; and this
connection with the real Servanus may have led to the history of this
period having been drawn back, and both _Calledei_ and Servanus
associated with the great apostle of Glasgow in popular tradition.
[Sidenote: Legends connected with the foundation of St. Andrews.]
We have seen that in the year 710, Nectan king of the Picts placed his
kingdom under the patronage of St. Peter, and we have now reached the
period when that apostle was superseded by St. Andrew as the patron
saint of the kingdom. Two separate editions of the legend of the
foundation of St. Andrews have come down to us. The older of these is a
document of the twelfth century, and appears in connection with the
earliest of the chronicles in which the century which intervened between
the last of the Scottish kings of Dalriada and the first of the Scottish
dynasty which ascended the throne of the Picts is suppressed, and the
line of the Scottish kings of Dalriada made immediately to precede
Kenneth mac Alpin, the founder of the latter dynasty. The second form of
the legend is longer and more elaborate, and emerges, at a somewhat
later period, from St. Andrews itself. The older legend bears this
title: ‘How it happens that the memory of St. Andrew the apostle should
exist more widely in the region of the Picts, now called Scocia, than in
other regions; and how it comes that so many abbacies were anciently
established there, which now in many cases are by hereditary right
possessed by laymen.’[491] The legend itself obviously consists of five
parts, very inartistically put together. In the first, we are told that
St. Andrew, the brother-german of St. Peter, preached to the northern
Scythian nations, and sought the Pictones, then the Achæans, and finally
the town of Patras, where he was crucified on the second day before the
kalends of December, and where his bones were kept down to the time of
Constantine the Great, and his sons Constantine and Constans, that is,
for a space of two hundred and seventy years. In their reign they were
taken up and transferred to Constantinople and there enshrined, and
remained there till the time of the Christian emperor Theodosius, a
period of about one hundred and ten years. In the second part we are
told that a king of the Picts, called Ungus, son of Urguist, rising with
a great army against the British nations inhabiting the southern part of
the island, and cruelly ravaging and slaying, came at last to the plain
of Merc, or the Merse. Here he wintered. Then came nearly the whole of
the natives of the island and surrounded him, wishing to destroy him
with his army; but, next day, when the king was walking with his seven
most intimate companions, a divine light surrounded them, and, falling
on their faces, they heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Ungus, Ungus,
hearken unto me, the apostle of Christ called Andrew, who am sent to
defend and protect you. Behold the sign of the cross in the air; let it
advance against your enemies. You must, however, offer up the tenth part
of your inheritance as an oblation to God omnipotent, and in honour of
St. Andrew.’ On the third day he divides his army into twelve troops,
each preceded by the sign of the cross, and they were victorious. The
king then returned home resolved to immolate the tenth part of his
inheritance to God and St. Andrew the apostle. The third part of the
legend tells us that one of the custodians of the body of St. Andrew the
apostle at Constantinople, when he had taken counsel and fasted for two,
three, nay four days, and prayed for the mercy of God, was admonished by
a vision that he must leave his country and kindred and home and go to a
land which would be shown him. Accordingly he went, conducted by the
angel, and arrived safely at the summit of the King’s Mount, that is,
_Rigmund_. The fourth part tells us that, in the same hour in which he
sat wearily with his seven companions, a divine light overwhelmed the
king of the Picts, who with his army was coming to a particular place
called Kartenan; and not bearing the light, they fell on their faces,
and deaf and blind were healed to the number of seven; and one, who had
been blind from his birth and received sight, cried with a loud voice
that he saw the place full of the visitation of angels; and the king
with his army came to the place which the Lord had shown to the blind
man. The fifth part begins, ‘Regulus, therefore, a monk, a pilgrim from
the city of Constantinople, with the relics of St. Andrew, which he had
brought with him, met the king at the gate which is called _Matha_, that
is, Mordurus. They saluted each other, and fixed their tents where now
is the Royal Hall.’ King Ungus then gave that place and city to God and
St. Andrew the apostle, that it should be the head and mother of all the
churches which are in the kingdom of the Picts. ‘Regulus, therefore,
abbot and monk, with his dear companions, occupied that place, leading a
monastic life, and serving God day and night, in holiness and justice
all the days of his life, and their bodies rest there. Regulus held in
his hand and power the third part of the whole of Scocia, and ordained
and distributed it in abbacies. This country commended itself, by the
situation and amenity of its localities, to Picts, Scots, Danes,
Norwegians, and others, who arrived to ravage the island; and, if they
needed refuge, it offered them always a safe receptacle, and received
them within her as in their own camp.’ The first part of this legend may
be put aside as connected with the history of the relics of St. Andrew
prior to the fifth century, and is true enough; but it is obvious that
the other parts are inconsistent with each other, and appear to be
derived from different sources and to have been inartistically brought
together. Thus, in the third part, an unnamed custodier of the relics
brings them from Constantinople and lands at _Rigmund_; but in the fifth
part Regulus, a monk, brings them from Constantinople and arrives at the
gate called _Matha_; and this last part seems unconnected and as if it
belonged to a different narrative from those that precede.
The second legend, which emanated from St. Andrews itself, is much more
elaborate.[492] The first part of this form of the legend states that in
the year 345 Constantine collected a great army to invade Patras, in
order to avenge the martyrdom of St. Andrew and remove his relics; that
an angel appeared and ordered Regulus, the bishop, with his clergy, to
proceed to the sarcophagus in which the bones of St. Andrew were
enshrined, and to take a part of them, consisting of three fingers of
the right hand, a part of one of the arms, the pan of one of the knees,
and one of the teeth, and conceal them; that the following day
Constantine entered the city and carried off to Rome the shrine
containing the rest of the bones; that he then laid waste the Insula
Tyberis and Colossia, and took from thence the bones of St. Luke and St.
Timothy, and carried them to Constantinople along with the relics of St.
Andrew. The second part of this legend is an elaboration of the second
part of the other. The Pictish king is called Hungus, son of Ferlon. His
enemy is Adhelstan, king of the Saxons; and he is encamped at the mouth
of the river Tyne. The night before the battle St. Andrew appears to
Hungus in a dream and promises him the victory, and tells him that his
relics will be brought to his kingdom, and the place where they are
brought will become honoured and celebrated. The people of the Picts
swear to venerate St. Andrew ever after if they prove victorious.
Adhelstan is defeated, and his head is taken off and carried to a place
called _Ardchinnechun_, or Queen’s Harbour. According to the third part
of this form of the legend, some days after this victory the angel of
God appears a second time to the blessed bishop Regulus, and warns him
to sail towards the north with the relics of St. Andrew which he had
reserved, and, wherever his vessel should be wrecked, there to erect a
church in honour of St. Andrew. Bishop Regulus, accordingly, accompanied
by holy men, sails towards the north, voyages among the islands of the
Grecian Sea for a year and a half, and wherever he lands erects an
oratory in honour of St. Andrew. At length they direct their sails
towards the north, and on the eve of St. Michael arrive at the land of
the Picts, at a place once called _Muckros_, but now Kylrimont; and, his
vessel being wrecked, he erects a cross he had brought from Patras, and
remains there seven days and nights. Having intrusted the care of this
place to the seniors St. Damian and his brother Merinach, Regulus and
the rest go with the relics to Forteviot, and find there the three sons
of King Hungus—viz. Owen, Nectan, and Finguine—who, being anxious as to
the life of their father, then on an expedition in the region of
Argathelia, give a tenth part of Forteviot to God and St. Andrew. They
then go to a place called Moneclatu, but now Monichi, and there Finchem,
the queen of King Hungus, is delivered of a daughter called Mouren, who
was afterwards buried at Kylrimont; and the queen gives the place to God
and St. Andrew. They then cross the mountain called the Mounth, and
reach a place called Doldencha, but now Chondrohedalvan, where they meet
King Hungus returning from his expedition. The king prostrates himself
before the relics, and this place also is given to God and St. Andrew.
They then return across the Mounth to Monichi, where a church was built
in honour of God and the apostle; thence to Forteviot, where also a
similar church is built. King Hungus then went with the holy men to
Chilrymont, and, making a circuit round a great part of that place,
immolated it to God and St. Andrew for the erection of churches and
oratories. King Hungus and Bishop Regulus and the rest proceeded round
it seven times, Bishop Regulus carrying on his head the relics of St.
Andrew, his followers chanting hymns, and King Hungus following on foot,
and after him the magnates of the kingdom. Thus they commended that
place to God, and protected it with the king’s peace; and, in
commemoration, the holy men surrounded it with twelve stone crosses.
King Hungus afterwards gave to the basilica of the holy apostle, as a
parochia, the land between the sea called Ishundenema and the sea called
Sletheuma, and in the district adjacent to it the land within a line
drawn from Largo through Ceres to Naughton. King Hungus gave this place,
viz. Chilrymont, to God and St. Andrew his apostle, with waters,
meadows, fields, pastures, moors and woods, as a gift for ever, and
granted the place with such liberty that its inhabitants should be free
and for ever relieved from the burden of hosting, and building castles
and bridges, and all secular exactions. Bishop Regulus then chanted the
Alleluia, that God might protect that place in honour of the apostle;
and, in token of this freedom, King Hungus took a turf in presence of
the Pictish nobles, and laid it on the altar of St. Andrew, and offered
that same turf upon it. This part of the legend concludes with the names
of thirteen Pictish witnesses of royal race, whose names have been
apparently taken at random from the earliest part of the list of the
Pictish kings.
[Sidenote: Older legend belongs to foundation of monastery in sixth
century.]
Now these two forms of the legend are in very striking contrast to each
other, especially in the part which Regulus plays in each. In the former
and older legend, he makes his first appearance when he meets the king
at the gate called _Matha_ with the relics. In the latter he is
introduced into the history of the removal of the relics from Patras,
and reserves a portion to be conveyed to a distant land; and thus, along
with him, the whole history is removed back to the fourth century. His
character too, and that of his foundation, is quite different in the two
legends. In the older he is presented to us as a monk and abbot. He and
all his people follow a monastic life at St. Andrews, and he founds
abbacies or monasteries. He possesses the third part of all Scotia, and
devotes it to the foundation of abbacies or monasteries throughout the
whole of it. In the later legend he appears as a bishop. He has two
presbyters and two Deacons among his followers, and he founds churches
and oratories which are dedicated to St. Andrew. In the one we have a
purely monastic foundation; in the other a church with secular clergy.
The older legend, therefore, takes us back for Regulus to the Monastic
Church which had been founded among the southern Picts by Columba
towards the end of the sixth century, and to it we must look for the
Regulus of this form of the legend. Now, we find it stated in the Acts
of Farannan that, after the great synod of Drumceitt in the year 573,
which was attended both by Columba and by Aidan, king of Dalriada, the
former, before he returned to Britain, founded a church in the Region of
Cairbre. This was the church of Drumcliffe, situated a little to the
north of Sligo, in the barony of Cairbury and diocese of Elphin, the
foundation of which is attributed to Columba in the old Irish Life. We
are then told that on this occasion he was met by the leading
ecclesiastics of the neighbourhood, with the men and women most noted
for sanctity, who accompanied him in some of his wanderings. Now, among
these ecclesiastics we find recorded the name of Regulus, or Riagail, of
Muicinis, an island in the lake formed by the river Shannon called Loch
Derg;[493] and this Regulus appears in the old Irish Martyrologies on
the 16th day of October. In the Felire of Angus the Culdee there is
commemorated, on that day, ‘Riagail, gifted was his career;’ and the
gloss is, ‘that is, Riagail of Muicinish, in Loch Derg.’[494] Regulus of
St. Andrews, however, is commemorated in the Scottish Calendar on the
17th of the same month; and we find that there is usually a confusion in
the celebrations on these two days, when the 16th day of the month is
also the 17th day before the kalends of the next month.[495] We also
find that, while the name of the Irish Regulus’ foundation is
_Muicinis_, or the isle of swine, the name of St. Andrews, before it
received that of Chilrymont, is said in the second legend to have been
_Muicross_, or the promontory of swine. It seems, therefore, to be a
reasonable conclusion that the Regulus of Muicinis, commemorated on the
16th October, and the Regulus of Muicross, on the 17th of that month,
were the same person, and that the historic Regulus belongs to a
Columban church founded among those which Columba established among the
southern Picts during the last years of his life, and at the same time
when Cainnech of Achaboe had his hermitage there; and to those older
foundations must be appropriated the churches dedicated to Regulus, or
St. Rule.
[Sidenote: The Columban monasteries among the Picts fell into the hands
of laymen.]
The title of the older legend states that the abbacies or monasteries
then founded ‘in the territory of the Picts, which is now called
Scotia,’ that is, in the districts between the Firth of Forth and the
river Spey, had to a great extent passed into the possession of laymen;
and the legend seems to attribute this to the depredations of the
occupiers of the land—the Picts, Scots, Danes, Norwegians and others who
took possession of them as a safe refuge. The order in which these
occupiers are enumerated is historically correct; and, though the
expressions are somewhat obscure, they seem to indicate that the
expulsion of the Columban monks, which terminated the Monastic Church in
these districts, had been followed by the same process as we learn from
Bede took place in Northumbria after the Scottish monks had withdrawn
from thence. The assimilation of the church there to that of Rome, and
the reaction towards a secular clergy, appear to have led there to a
secularisation of the monasteries to a great extent. Bede gives us an
account of this in a letter written in the last year of his life, that
is, in 735, to Bishop Ecgberct; and the picture he draws shows a
complete disorganisation of the monastic institution in the land, and
its usurpation by the secular world. ‘As you yourself very well know,’
he says, ‘those who are utterly regardless of a monastic life have got
into their power so many places under the name of monasteries, that
there is no place at all which the sons of the nobility or of veteran
soldiers may occupy.’ Again, ‘But there are others guilty of a still
more grievous offence. For, though they are themselves laics, and
neither habituated to nor actuated by the love of a regular life, yet,
by pecuniary payments to the kings, and under pretext of founding
monasteries, they purchase for themselves territories in which they may
have freer scope for their lust; and, moreover, they cause these to be
assigned to them by royal edicts for an hereditary possession;’ ‘and,
though they themselves are laymen, yet they have monks under their
rule,—or, rather, they are not monks when they assemble there, but such
as, having been expelled from the true monasteries for the crime of
disobedience, are found wandering up and down; or those whom they
themselves have succeeded in alluring from these monasteries; or, at any
rate, those among their own servants whom they have been able to induce
to take the tonsure and make a promise of monastic obedience to them.
With these motley bands they fill the cells which they have
constructed.’ ‘Thus,’ says Bede further, ‘for about thirty years, that
is, from the time when King Aldfrid was removed from the world, our
province has been so demented by this mad error, that from that period
scarcely has there been a single prefect who has not, during the course
of his prefectship, founded for himself a monastery of this description.
And, since this most wretched custom has become prevalent, the ministers
also and servants of the king were content to do the same. And thus,
contrary to the established order, numberless persons are found who
style themselves indiscriminately abbots and prefects, or ministers or
servants of the king; and, though laymen might have been instructed in
something of the monastic life, not indeed by experience but by hearsay,
yet these persons have nothing in common with the character or
profession whose duty it is to give the instruction. And indeed such
persons, at their own caprice, suddenly receive the tonsure, as you are
aware; and by their own decision are made from laymen, not monks, but
abbots.’[496] This piteous wail of the true-hearted Bede seems to find
an echo in the title of the older legend of St. Andrew. King Aldfrid
died in 705, and the thirty years Bede refers to extend to the year in
which he wrote this account, and which was indeed the last of his life.
It was but twelve years after King Aldfrid’s death that King Nectan
expelled the Columban monks from his dominions. The monasteries would
naturally fall into the possession of the tribe of the land; and, if we
substitute monasteries founded by the Columban church, from which their
monks were expelled, for monasteries and cells directly founded by
laymen, it is probable enough that the withdrawal of the Columban monks
in the one country and their expulsion in the other, with the
introduction of a secular clergy in both, was followed by similar
results; and that the kingdom of the Picts may have exhibited the
greater part of these monasteries in the hands of laymen, the semblance
and the nomenclature of the monastic institution being thus kept up
without the reality. Bede indicates that the motive for doing so was to
preserve the privileges of such foundations, such as exemption from
service and right of sanctuary, without the corresponding obligations;
and such grounds of action would be equally powerful in the one country
as in the other. Tighernac records in 747 the death of Tuathal, abbot of
_Cinnrighmonadh_,[497] or Kylrimont. He may have been one of those
titular abbots; but as this is the only instance in which an abbot of
Kilrymont is noticed in the Irish Annals, it is more probable that he
was the expelled abbot of the old monastery, who had died in Ireland.
[Sidenote: Second legend belongs to the later foundation to which relics
of St. Andrew were brought.]
But if the historic Regulus belongs to the older Columban foundation at
Muicross, and if the expulsion of the Columban monks was followed by
such results, it is equally certain that King Hungus and the reception
of the relics of St. Andrew, which is inseparably connected with him in
the legend, must be brought down to a later period, to which also the
fictitious Regulus belongs. The lists of the Pictish kings show no Angus
or Hungus, son of Fergus, till we come to the powerful king of that name
who reigned from 731 to 761; and the events ascribed to him in the
legend correspond with those of his reign. He was engaged in war in the
Merse, and he had penetrated into those parts of Argathelia which formed
the Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, on an expedition which had for its
object the entire conquest of that kingdom, and might well lead his sons
to fear for his safety. The narrative which Bede gives us of the
circumstances which led King Nectan to place his kingdom under the
patronage of St. Peter in 710 entirely excludes the possibility of the
national veneration of St. Andrew having been introduced before that
date; and, while it is obvious, from an analysis of the legends, that a
fictitious and artificial antiquity has been given to it, yet the
knowledge of its true date seems not to have been entirely extinguished
by the fabulous one: for we find a record of it in one chronicle, though
not a very early one, when it is said, ‘The zeire of God sevynn hundir
lxi ye relikis of Sanct Androw ye Apostle com in Scotland;’[498] and
this year synchronises with the last year of the reign of Angus mac
Fergus, who was one of the most powerful kings of the Picts. If, then,
the relics of St. Andrew were brought into Scotland in the reign of this
Angus, king of the Picts, the question at once arises, Where did they
come from?—and here the mind naturally reverts to the church of Hexham.
It too was dedicated to St. Andrew. It too possessed relics of St.
Andrew. But in both it preceded in date the foundation of St. Andrews in
Scotland; for Hexham was founded in 674 by Wilfrid, who dedicated it to
the apostle, and the relics were brought there by his successor, Bishop
Acca, whose episcopate lasted from 709 to 732. In one remarkable
respect, too, one church was a reflection of the other; for Wilfrid
dedicated his church to St. Andrew in consequence of his belief that he
had received the gift of persuasive eloquence through the intercession
of the apostle, in answer to his prayers offered up in the church of St.
Andrew in Rome; and he afterwards erected two chapels at Hexham,
dedicated to St. Mary and St. Michael, owing to his belief that he had
recovered from a mortal sickness through the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, announced to him in a vision by Michael the Archangel. This
peculiar combination, therefore, at Hexham, of a principal dedication to
St. Andrew with chapels to St. Mary and St. Michael, arose out of
incidents in Wilfrid’s life. And yet we find the same combination at St.
Andrews in Scotland, for the second legend tells us, after narrating the
foundation of St. Andrews, ‘Afterwards in Chilrymont the holy men
erected seven churches—one in honour of St. Regulus, the second in
honour of St. Aneglas the Deacon, the third in honour of St. Michael the
Archangel, the fourth in honour of St. Mary the Virgin, the fifth in
honour of St. Damian, the sixth in honour of St. Brigida the virgin, and
the seventh in honour of a certain virgin Muren.’ The first of these
churches belongs, of course, to the older foundation; but here we find
that the third and fourth are chapels dedicated to St. Michael and St.
Mary. There seems, too, to have been a tradition that about this time
the foundation of an episcopal see among the Picts proceeded from
Hexham. When Bede wrote his history in 731, Acca was still living at
Hexham, and exercising his episcopal functions there apparently without
disturbance; but Simeon of Durham tells us that in 732—that is, in the
following year—Acca was expelled from his see;[499] and Prior Richard of
Hexham adds to this statement, ‘By what urgent necessity he was driven
forth, or whither he directed his steps, I do not find recorded. But
there are some who say that at that time he commenced and prepared the
episcopal see at Candida.’[500] or Whithern. He certainly founded no see
at Whithern, for we have the contemporary authority of Bede for the fact
that it had been founded some years before, and that Pecthelm was its
first bishop; but, at the time Prior Richard wrote, the memory of the
great Pictish kingdom had passed away, the Picts of Galloway alone
retained the name, and writers of that period transferred to Galloway
events that truly belonged to the northern portion of the race. Thus
Florence of Worcester placed Trumuini as bishop of Candida, though it is
clearly stated by Bede that the Picts he presided over were those north
of the Firth of Forth; and Prior Richard, in quoting the passage from
Bede, where he says that Wilfrid’s bishopric extended over the Picts as
far as Osuiu’s dominion extended, over whom Trumuini was afterwards
placed, adds the expression, ‘because Whithern had not yet its own
bishop,’[501] thus transferring what was intended by Bede to apply to
the Picts north of the Forth to those of Galloway. The Hexham tradition
was probably no more than that it was believed Acca had gone to the
nation of the Picts and founded a bishopric among them. It is certainly
a remarkable coincidence that Acca, the venerator of St. Andrew, and the
importer of his relics into Hexham, should have fled in 732, and that a
report should have sprung up that he had founded a bishop’s see among
the Picts; and that St. Andrews should have been actually founded by a
Pictish king between the years 736 and 761, and part of the relics of
St. Andrew brought to it at that time. Indeed, the correspondence
between the church history of the Northumbrian and Pictish kingdoms in
this respect is at this time very striking:—the Northumbrians expelling
the Columban clergy, introducing secular clergy with dedications to St.
Peter, and then dedicating Hexham to St. Andrew, and receiving the
relics of the apostle brought there by one of its bishops; and, sixty
years later, the Picts expelling the Columban monks, introducing the
secular clergy, placing the kingdom under the patronage of St. Peter,
and then receiving from some unknown quarter the relics of St. Andrew,
and founding a church in honour of that apostle, who becomes the
national patron saint. The second legend concludes with this
statement:—‘These are the names of those holy men who brought the sacred
relics of St. Andrew the apostle into Scotia—St. Regulus himself;
Gelasius the deacon; Maltheus the hermit; St. Damian, presbyter, and his
brother Merinach; Nervius and Crisenius from the island Nola; Mirenus,
and Thuluculus the deacon; Nathabeus and Silvius his brother; Seven
hermits from the island of the Tiber—Felix, Juranus, Mauritius,
Madianus, Philippus, Eugenius, Lunus; and three virgins from Collossia,
viz., Triduana, Potentia, Cineria. These virgins are buried at the
church of St. Aneglas. Thana, son of Dudabrach, wrote this document for
King Pherath son of Bergeth, in the town of Migdele.’ The king here
meant is probably the last king but one of the Picts, called in the
Pictish Chronicle Wrad son of Bargoit, who reigned from 840 to 843; and
Migdele is Meigle in Perthshire.
[Sidenote: _Keledei_ of St. Andrews originally hermits.]
The church of St. Andrews, then, is represented in this legend as
consisting of three groups—First, one of secular clergy, viz., Bishop
Regulus himself, with two priests and two deacons, and three others,
whose quality is not given; secondly, a group of hermits, viz.,
Maltheus, with two from the island of Nola, and seven from the island of
Tiber—in all, a community of ten; and, thirdly, three virgins. The
second group is that of the hermits, representing a community of
_Keledei_ similar to those established by Servanus in Lochleven. The
legend of Triduana, which is preserved in the Aberdeen Breviary, tells
us that she led a heremitical life, with her virgins Potentia and
Emeria, in a desert place at Roscoby (Rescobie in Forfarshire). The
tyrant Nectanevus, prince of the neighbourhood, pursued her, whereupon
she fled to Dunfallad (Dunfallandy) in Athol. There his ministers coming
to her and telling her that the beauty of her eyes had attracted the
prince, she plucked them out and gave them to them. Triduana then
devoting herself to prayer and fasting in Lestalryk, now Restalrig, in
Laudonia, passed into heaven.[502] Here, as usual, the legend is
supported by the dedications. At Rescobie is St. Triduan’s fair.
Restalrig is also dedicated to her; and here too a connection with
Northumbria, to which it then belonged, seems to peep out.
[Sidenote: Canonical rule brought into Scotland, and _Keledei_ become
canons.]
The canonical rule appears to have been adopted in Scotland not long
after it had been introduced into Ireland; for, as we learn from the
Chronicles, two hundred and twenty-five years and eleven months after
the church of Abernethy had been founded by Gartnach, son of Domelch,
who reigned from 584 to 599, the church of Dunkeld was founded by
Constantin, son of Fergus king of the Picts, who reigned from 790 to
820. This places the foundation of Dunkeld some time between the years
810 and 820, and the tradition of Dunkeld, as reported by Alexander
Mylne, a canon of that church in 1575, is that he placed there
‘religious men who are popularly called Keledei, otherwise Colidei, that
is God-worshippers, who, according to the rite of the Oriental Church,
had wives, from whom, however, they withdrew while ministering, as was
afterwards the custom in the church of St. Regulus, now St.
Andrew;’[503] while Wyntoun, the prior of Lochleven, tells us that
Awcht hundyr wyntyr and fyftene
Fra God tuk fleysch off Mary schene,
Leo and Charlys bath ware dede,
And Lowys than in Charlys stede.
The kyng off Peychtis Constantyne
Be Tay than foundyd Dwnkeldyne,
A place solempne cathedrale,
Dowyd welle in temporalle.
The byschape and chanownys thare
Serẅys God and Saynct Colme, seculare,
Off oure byschoprykis, off renowne
The thryd, and reputatyowne.[504]
The date assigned by Wyntoun to the foundation of Dunkeld is probably
correct, and those religious men who Mylne says were popularly called
Keledei, Wyntoun here calls ‘chanownys seculare.’
[Sidenote: Conclusion as to origin of the Culdees.]
The result, then, that we have arrived at is that the Culdees originally
sprang from that ascetic order who adopted a solitary service of God in
an isolated cell as the highest form of religious life, and who were
termed _Deicolæ_; that they then became associated in communities of
anchorites, or hermits; that they were clerics, and might be called
monks, but only in the sense in which anchorites were monks; that they
made their appearance in the eastern districts of Scotland at the same
time as the secular clergy were introduced, and succeeded the Columban
monks who had been driven across the great mountain range of Drumalban,
the western frontier of the Pictish kingdom; and that they were finally
brought under the canonical rule along with the secular clergy,
retaining, however, to some extent the nomenclature of the monastery,
until at length the name of _Keledeus_, or Culdee, became almost
synonymous with that of secular canon.
-----
Footnote 431:
The latest and ablest supporter of the view that the Columban monks
were the Culdees is Ebrard, in his _Culdeische Kirche_. He rightly
gives, as the correct form of the name in Irish, _Ceile De_, and
properly explains _Ceile_ as meaning ‘Socius,’ but entirely fails in
his attempt to connect the name with the Columban Church. He finds the
word _Ceile_ in the Irish name of St. Columba, Coluim _cille_, which
he says should be Coluim _ceile_, or the Culdee, and that the name of
_Urbs Coludi_, given by Bede to Coldingham, means the town of the
Culdees. This is etymology of the same kind as that which makes
Kirkcaldy, the old form of which is Kyrc-aldyn, to mean the church of
the Culdees.
Footnote 432:
The legend of Bonifacius is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts
and Scots_, p. 421.
Footnote 433:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p 45. Dr. Reeves remarks that, if
Rosmicbairend has been written for _Rosmbaircind_, the name would be
pronounced Rosmarkyn.
Footnote 434:
Wynton’s _Chronicle_, B. v. c. xiii., in series of _Scottish
Historians_, vol. ii. p. 58.
Footnote 435:
Bishop Forbes’s _Calendar of Scottish Saints_, p. 336.
Footnote 436:
Fergustus Episcopus Scotiæ Pictus huic constituto a nobis promulgato
subscripsi.—Haddan’s _Councils_, vol. ii. part i. p. 7. The epithet
Pictus at this period implies that he was of the race of the Scottish
Picts.
Footnote 437:
It is possible that Neachtan may have made up his quarrel with the
Iona monks and retired to Iona, as we find there, at the end of a
broad and elevated terrace near the present ruins, the remains of a
burying-ground called Cill-ma-Neachtan, which marks the site of an
oratory.
Footnote 438:
_Epist. ad Eustochium._
Footnote 439:
_Collationes_, xviii. and xix.; Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. xix.
Footnote 440:
See Dupin’s _Ecclesiastical History_ for an abstract of this treatise,
vol. iv. p. 18.
Footnote 441:
Isidore, _De Ecc. Off._, lib. ii. c. 16. Migne, _Patrologia_, vol.
xli.
Footnote 442:
Bede, _Hist. Ec._, B. iv. c. 28. _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. 17.
Footnote 443:
Bede, _Vit. S. Cudbercti_, c. 1.
Footnote 444:
Religio munda, et immaculata apud Deum et Patrem hæc est: visitare
pupillos et viduas in tribulatione eorum, et immaculatum se custodire
ab hoc sæculo.—Cap. i., 27.
Footnote 445:
Qui aliquando non populus, nunc autem populus Dei; qui non consecuti
misericordiam, nunc autem misericordiam consecuti. Charissimi, obsecro
vos tanquam advenas et peregrinos abstinere vos a carnalibus
desideriis, quæ militant adversus animam.—Cap. ii. vv. 10, 11.
Footnote 446:
Nam et vicini et monachi, ad quos sæpe veniebat, Antonium videntes,
_Deicolam_ nuncupabant; indultisque naturæ vocabulis, quidam ut
filium, alii ut fratrem diligebant.—Migne, _Patrologia_, vol. xxxv.
col. 129.
Footnote 447:
Non illa ardua et perfecta, quæ a paucis et peregregiis _Deicolis_
patrantur.—Martinus _de Vitæ honestæ Formula_: D’Achery, iii. 312.
Footnote 448:
Quicunque ergo se habitaculum Dei effici voluerit, humilem et quietum
se facere contendat, ut non verborum aviditate et corporis
flexibilitate, sed humilitatis veritate cognoscatur esse _Deicola_:
cordis enim bonitas non verborum fictis indiget religionibus.—Migne,
_Patrologia_, vol. xxxvii. col. 234.
Footnote 449:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 115; Fleury, l. 37, c. 27. Colgan supposes that
_Deicola_ may be the Latin form of the Irish name of Dichuill, and
this is usually assumed to be the case; but there is no authority for
it, and no other analogy between the names than an accidental
resemblance in appearance.
Footnote 450:
Peracto vero quadriennio, apparuit ei angelus Domini et dixit illi,
Vade ad plebem Dei, id est, Eremitas et solitarios nudis pedibus et
conversare cum eis, ut proberis per aliquot tempus. Et venit in
solitudinem et mansit cum Eremitis per 8 annos.—Colgan, _Tr. Th._, p.
48, recté 52.
Footnote 451:
Tempore illo fuit quidam Dregmo in territorio Hagustaldensis ecclesiæ,
Deum valde timens et elymosinarum operibus, prout facultas sibi
suppeditabat, haud segniter deditus ac per omnia a comprovincialium
moribus vita discordans. Erat enim miræ simplicitatis et innocentiæ
homo ac erga sanctos Dei devotionis et venerationis immensæ.
Quapropter eum omnes vicini sui in magno honore habebant, illumque
verum Dei cultorem appellabant.—Sim. Dun., _Hist. Regum_ (Surtees
Ed.), p. 26.
Footnote 452:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. iii. p. 88.
Footnote 453:
_Ib._, vol. iii. p. 306.
Footnote 454:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. iv. p. 18.
Footnote 455:
Dilectissimis sacerdotibus ecclesiarum Christi præsulibus et cunctis
cleris in eisdem ubique et famulantibus et _Deicolis_ omnibus per
totum mundum degentibus.
Footnote 456:
D’Achery, _Spicilegium_, vol. i. p. 565.
Footnote 457:
Hefele, _Concilien Geschichte_, vol. iv. p. 10.
Footnote 458:
Thorpe, _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, vol. ii. p. 27.
Footnote 459:
Haddan and Stubbs’ _Councils_, vol. iii. p. 450.
Footnote 460:
Reeves, _The Culdees of the British Isles_, pp. 59, 144.
Footnote 461:
Dei servitium passim nostra in gente a Cultoribus Clericis defleo
extinctum et tepefactum.—_Statuta Ecclesiæ_, vol. i. p. ccxiii. See
other notices there mentioned.
Footnote 462:
_Mart. Don._, p. 83.
Footnote 463:
_Mart. Don._, p. 235.
Footnote 464:
_Ib._, p. 245.
Footnote 465:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, B. iii. c. 42.
Footnote 466:
See for a description and ground-plan the Appendix No. I., p. 322, to
the edition of Reeves’s _Adamnan_ in series of Scottish Historians.
Footnote 467:
Adamnan, _Vit. S. Col._, B. i. c. 6.
Footnote 468:
_Ib._, B. ii. c. 43.
Footnote 469:
A.D. 1007 Muredach mac Cricain _do deirgiu Comarbus Columcille ar Dia_
(resigns the corbeship of Columcille, or abbacy, for God).—_Chron.
Picts and Scots_, p. 366.
Footnote 470:
In the Irish Glosses, edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes, the Latin word
_advona_ is glossed by _Deorad_. Among the Charters of Kells is one
founding, in 1084, a _Diseart_, which is given to God and devout
pilgrims; ‘no wanderer (_Erraid_) to have any possession till he
surrenders his life to God (_do Dia_) and is devout;’ and in 1000
Tempull Gerailt is rebuilt for pilgrims of God (_Deoradaibh De_).
Footnote 471:
_Ancient Laws of Ireland_, vol. i. p. 59.
Footnote 472:
A.D. 677 Beccan Ruimean quievit in insula Britanniæ.—_Tigh._ 17th
March, Beccan Ruim.—_Mart. Don._
Footnote 473:
Abridged from Petrie’s description in his _Round Towers_, p. 421. See
also _Proceedings of R. S. A._, vol. x. p. 551.
Footnote 474:
_Ceile_, as a substantive, means literally, ‘socius, maritus,’ but it
has a secondary meaning, ‘servus,’ and as an adverb it means
‘pariter.’ Dr. Reeves, in his work on the British Culdees, adopts the
secondary meaning, and considers that it is simply the Irish
equivalent of Servus Dei, which, he says, was the ordinary expression
for a monk, and hence starts with the assumption that the _Ceile De_
were simply monks. This is one of the very few instances in which the
author has found himself unable to accept a dictum of Dr. Reeves. This
rendering appears to him objectionable—first, because no example can
be produced in which the term Servus Dei appears translated by _Ceile
De_; secondly, that the term _Ceile De_ is applied to a distinct class
who were not very numerous in Ireland, while the term Servus Dei is a
general expression applicable to religious of all classes, and
included, as we have seen, the secular canons as well as the monks.
Ebrard rejects the rendering by Servus Dei, and supposes that it is
the Irish equivalent of Vir Dei; but this is still more objectionable.
Vir Dei was a term applied to all saints of whatever class; and in the
Litany of Angus, who himself bore the name of _Ceile De_, or the
Culdee, it is translated _Fer De_, but in the glosses on the Felire of
Angus the word _Ceile_ is glossed _Carait_, or friend; and the author
long ago came to the conclusion that, though not etymologically
identic, it is the Irish equivalent of _Deicola_, God-worshipper, in
its primary meaning, that is, in the sense of companionship or near
connection with God. The late Dr. Joseph Robertson, when he was
preparing the Introduction to the _Statuta_, came by an independent
inquiry to the same result (see Introduction, vol. i. p. ccxii.); and
the author cannot help thinking that, had it not been for the
etymological considerations which weighed with Dr. Reeves, his
historical inquiry would have brought him to the same conclusion.
Footnote 475:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 454.
Footnote 476:
_Leabhar Breac_, part ii. p. 261. Dr. Reeves has printed the part that
relates to the _Cele De_ from a different MS., with a translation, in
his _British Culdees_, p. 82.
Footnote 477:
A.D. 869 Comgan fota Ancorita Tamlachta quievit.—_An. Ult._ 2 August,
Comgan _Cele De_.—_Mart. Tam._ A.D. 1031 _Cond na mbocht, cend Celed
nDe agus Ancoiri Cluana mic Nois_.—_An. F. M._, vol. ii. p. 525.
Footnote 478:
_An. Ult. ad an._ 921.
Footnote 479:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, Pref. p. ix.
Footnote 480:
Elarius ancorita et scriba Locha Crea.—_An. Ult. ad an._ 806.
Footnote 481:
_Topog. Hib._, dist. 2, c. 4.
Footnote 482:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 79.
Footnote 483:
Printed with translations in Dr. Reeves’s _History of the British
Culdees_, p. 84.
Footnote 484:
Compare the rule in page 84 with canons of the Council of
Aix-la-Chapelle.
Footnote 485:
Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 10.
Footnote 486:
This life is printed from the Marsh MS., Dublin, in the _Chronicles of
the Picts and Scots_, p. 412.
Footnote 487:
_Alma ingen rig Cruithnech mathair Sheirb mec Proic rig Canand
Eigeipti acus ise sin in sruith senoir congeb Cuilendros hi Sraith
Hirend hi Comgellgaib itir sliab Nochel acus muir nGiudan._—_Book of
Lecan_, fol. 43. bb. Reeves’s _British Culdees_, p. 124. The sea of
Giudan is the Firth of Forth, so called from the city of Giudi, which
Bede says was in the middle of it, and which may be identified with
Inchkeith. It is called in the Latin life Mons Britannorum, a mistake
perhaps for Mare.
Footnote 488:
Brude fitz Dergert, xxx, ane. En quel temps ueint Sains Seruanus en
Fiffe.—_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 201.
Footnote 489:
_Registrum Prioratus S. Andreæ_, pp. 113-118. Reeves’s _British
Culdees_, pp. 125, 126.
Footnote 490:
Bishop Forbes’s _Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern_, p. 66.
Footnote 491:
This legend is printed in the _Chronicles of the Picts and Scots_, p.
138.
Footnote 492:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 183.
Footnote 493:
Colgan, _A.SS._, p. 337.
Footnote 494:
_Riaguil raith arremsin_, i.e. _Riagail Muicindsi fa Loch Derc_.
Footnote 495:
Thus St. Patrick is commemorated at Auvergne on the 16th of March,
while his day in the Irish Martyrologies is the 17th of that month.
Footnote 496:
_Bædæ epistola ad Ecgberctum antistitem_, §§ 6 and 7.
Footnote 497:
747 Mors Tuathalain Abbas _Cindrighmonaigh_.—_Tigh. Chron. Picts and
Scots_, p. 76.
Footnote 498:
_Chron. Picts and Scots_, p. 387.
Footnote 499:
732 Acca Episcopus eodem anno de sua sede fugatus est.—Sim Dun. _Hist.
Regum_.
Footnote 500:
Qua autem urgente necessitate pulsus sit, vel quo diverterit, scriptum
non reperi. Sunt tamen qui dicunt quod eo tempore episcopalem sedem in
Candida inceperit et præperaverit.—Cap. xv.
Footnote 501:
Quia Candida Casa nondum episcopum proprium habuerat.—Cap. vi.
Footnote 502:
_Brev. Aberd. Pars Hyem._ fol. lxx.
Footnote 503:
Mylne, _Vitæ Episcoporum Dunkeldensium_, p. 4.
Footnote 504:
Wyntoun, _Chron._, B. vi. c. vii.