It may be presumed that there had been bishops with authority over various areas of what is now Scotland, certainly at intervals and perhaps continuously, from the missionary days of St Ninian in Galloway and elsewhere in the early fifth century. But only fragments of information about them can be traced before the early twelfth century.1 Then, from the time of King David I (1124-53) onwards, teams of some ten (later eleven) bishops can be traced in fairly regular succession to each other, with Glasgow and St Andrews being much bigger than any of the other dioceses in terms of area, numbers of clergy and revenues. Glasgow corresponded in a general way with the earlier kingdom of Strathclyde;2 but from 1133 it was restricted to the area north of the Solway Firth, following the erection of Carlisle diocese in that year. About the same time the lordship of Galloway too was recognized as a separate see after being apparently in abeyance since the early ninth century. St Andrews diocese sprawled up the east coast from Berwick northwards nearly to Aberdeen; but it had been organized by the kings of Scotland too late to prevent the extensive survival of bonds of loyalty dating from the missionary centuries between many parishes that were geographically within the bounds of St Andrews diocese but administratively linked with neighbouring traditional episcopal centres of long standing at Dunblane, Dunkeld and Brechin. Argyll diocese was to be erected in the 1180s out of the western part of the hitherto unwieldy Dunkeld diocese. To the north were the four compact but quite extensive dioceses of Aberdeen, Moray, Ross and Caithness, all of which in different ways took time to settle on permanent sites for their cathedrals at Old Aberdeen, Elgin, Fortrose and Dornooch. The twelfth century was the time when these eleven sees of equal status were finally established with definite boundaries on the mainland of modern Scotland. (In the Western and Northern Isles the dioceses of the Isles [based on Peel on the Isle of Man] and Orkney [based on Kirkwall] formed part of the ecclesiastical province of Nidaros or Trondheim in the kingdom of Norway, and were to be ceded to Scotland only in 1266 and 1468-9, respectively.)
What was wholly exceptional in these arrangements was the absence of even one archbishop with metropolitan authority under the canon law over his fellow-bishops who formed with him a national church. This was not for want of trying by the English archbishop based on York from 1072 onwards:3 for decades various moves from that quarter towards obtaining power over the Scottish bishops by papal decree were countered by alternative, equally abortive Scottish attempts to secure the elevation of the bishop of St Andrews from an informal position as leader of his equal fellow-bishops to one with legal authority over them. But the efforts of York failed (except in the case of Galloway), and by 1192 the pope was to recognize the Scottish church as a whole to be a ‘special daughter’ of the Roman see with no intermediary, with the pope himself performing the supervisory functions of a metropolitan archbishop.4 Nowhere else in western Christendom was a similar arrangement made in the middle ages for a national church. This direct link with Rome was, for four centuries until 1560, to bring to Scotland greater awareness of developments in the church at large than might be expected in a small country lying so far from the main theatres of events.
Whilst earlier bishops may often have had a roving commission, going wherever their spiritual services such as confirmation and ordination were needed, from the early twelfth century the authority of each came to be confined within a territorial
Diocese with definite boundaries. In Scotland as elsewhere, this arose partly from the implementation of the newly codified canon law, which laid down standards to be followed throughout the western church. But it was also a consequence of the definition of parish boundaries that followed as a necessary consequence of King David’s general instruction that all parishioners should pay ‘teind’ (the Scots word for ‘tithe’) each year to their local parish priest.5 He put the enforcement of this payment (which was derived ultimately from the Old Testament) into the hands of the king’s sheriffs. They apparently saw to it that agreement was reached on the position of all parochial boundaries, so that all householders who were due to pay a tax of a tenth of the value of the produce of their land, or of the fruits of their labour or skill, could be told who was to be the recipient of this national tax for the support of the church. Every acre of the country was somehow allocated to a parish and, as a consequence, to a diocese. By about 1300 the eleven dioceses of mainland Scotland had been divided into some nine hundred of these parochial units, with perhaps another hundred in the Western and Northern Isles.6
Besides endowments in land, teind was the main source of income for the church and the clergy. A simple calculation, based on the undoubted fact that parishes normally contained many more than ten teind-paying households, reveals that the value of teind was far greater than was needed for the financial support of a bachelor parish priest living at the same level as his parishioners. There was spare cash around; and lay patrons everywhere, whose predecessors had arranged for the settling of parish priests on their land in the first place, were by the thirteenth century reaching agreements with the various bishops for the ‘appropriation’ (as it was called) of much the greater part of the annual income derived from teind to other worthy church pur-poses.7 It was thus that the financing of expensive building projects at cathedrals and abbeys became possible, as well as financial support for the communities of clergy to serve these major churches that were a decoration to the nation. Later this resource came to be applied to the support of clergy (as clerks) engaged in a wide variety of professional activities, not least the ambitious few who were prepared to face the long years of study required for university degrees in pursuance of careers that often took them far away from the source of their financial standing.8 In their place modestly paid curates were employed to perform the religious duties attached to their benefices. It is often suggested that this system of appropriations left the clergy who actually served the parishes impoverished for the benefit of supposedly greedy individuals and institutions. There were certainly inequalities in the financial rewards of a clerical career; but successive popes did lay down guidelines for the incomes that were merited in proportion to academic qualifications. For example, doctors of the ‘higher’ faculties of theology, canon law and civil law were entitled to be rewarded with one or more benefices worth in total 200 livres of Tours, whilst masters of arts were entitled to just 120 livres.9 Such a system did make possible the maintenance and service of large cathedral and collegiate churches where religious observance could be conducted on a scale that was presumably an inspiration to the country at large. It also enabled the clergy as a class to offer a wide variety of professional services as private and public administrators, lawyers, teachers and doctors, not just as preachers and pastors. It was the resources of the church which made the provision of such services possible in an era when civil taxation was minimal and only occasional. It is not surprising that, then as now, the rewards of a professional career were
Map 20.1 The Scottish church c.1300.
Strikingly variable. But there was then no equivalent of the modern egalitarian pressure in the Church of Scotland to ensure that only a minority of lucky ministers receive stipends above the minimum. Indeed, ‘when status was measured by display and worldly success was seen as reflecting God’s favour, the leading churchmen would have been expected to radiate magnificence’.10 There is little sign of discontent in medieval Scotland with a social system based on patronage and influence. Besides, while a minority of clergy certainly had a better standard of living than others, it has recently been argued that late medieval parish priests on a minimum stipend of ?10 a year (plus manse, glebe and offerings) were not as badly off as some earlier commentators have thought.11 It was only as part of fundamental rethinking that was to come with the Reformation of the sixteenth century that a general increase of the stipends of the parish clergy came to be accepted as necessary.
Parallel to the twelfth-century extension of episcopal activity was a remarkably rapid spread of new communities of monks and regular canons belonging not only to the traditional Benedictine order but, more strikingly, to the reformed Tironen-sian, Cluniac, Cistercian, Augustinian, Premonstratensian and Valliscaulian orders. It has been calculated that in the period 1113-1230 thirty sizeable monasteries belonging to these seven groups were founded in Scotland, with over a dozen less important smaller houses.12 Successive kings, with David I outstanding, were the most active founders, along with some leading lords and bishops. Some houses, such as Dunfermline, Scone, Melrose and Paisley, started as colonies of mother houses in England; but even they maintained strong continental links as well. Indeed, it has been calculated that well over half of the Scottish monasteries had links more or less directly with French houses of their orders,13 that is, with the most fertile source at this time of fresh interpretations of the monastic ideal. In addition some thirteen houses of nuns in Scotland were to be listed by the chronicler Walter Bower in the 1440s, though most of them were small communities about which little is known.14 No Scotswoman of outstanding piety like the English Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich has been noted. For more than four centuries all these monasteries, with their extensive endowments in the form of lands and appropriated churches, were to be an inspiring feature of the Scottish ecclesiastical scene. They were able to raise splendid buildings and keep repairing and improving them, which is evidence of the way in which their function had the general support of the country. The Benedictine and Augustinian houses formed a part of the organized general witness of the Scottish church, subject to regular visitation by the local bishop; others such as the Cluniacs and Cistercians were privileged under papal guidelines to be exempt from such inspections as parts of internationally organized orders. This variety of arrangements meant, of course, that any planned reallocation of resources as ecclesiastical fashions and interests changed was well-nigh impossible.
A development of the same problem arose from c.1230 onwards with the arrival in Scotland of the next wave of new religious enthusiasts in the form of the friars - some Dominicans in 1230, Franciscans in 1231, Carmelites by the 1260s.15 As a mobile preaching and pastoral force they based themselves on modest houses, usually in towns, following rules laid down and directed on an international basis, coming sometimes at the invitation of the local bishop but privileged to be exempt from his authority. Again they were to be a permanent part of the Scottish religious scene until 1560, supported in their modest lifestyle by the alms of the faithful. Intellectually able, and accustomed to keep on the move throughout western Christendom under internationally recognized superiors, they played their part in keeping Scotland in touch with developments in the church at large.
Between 1125 and 1239 Scotland had also been brought into contact with such wider European developments through a number of visits by papal legates.16 The first of these, in 1125, was Cardinal John of Crema, who was commissioned to explore the claims of the archbishop of York over the Scottish church and to report back to Rome for a final decision. Others, such as Cardinal John of Salerno in 1201-2, were entrusted with acting on the spot to bring local customs into harmony with the western church as a whole, especially by settling local disputes among the clergy with delegated papal authority. Cardinal Otto da Tonengo was to come with similar powers in 1239, with the added task of levying a tax on the Scottish clergy towards the costs of a papally organized crusade to Palestine. Such legates could enter Scotland only with the king’s permission, which was sometimes freely given but could be refused, as happened in 1267-8 when King Alexander III refused to let Cardinal Ottobono Fieschi come into Scotland, and the legate had to be content with suggesting reforms through a handful of Scottish representatives who came to a council held by him in London. Only once again in the medieval period did the king allow a legate with full powers to come from Rome to Scotland. This was the ill-fated mission of Anthony Altani, bishop of Urbino, in 1436-7, which proved abortive when King James I was assassinated before the legate had a chance to start his work.
Papal demands for taxes from the Scottish clergy, however, had had some success in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Most notable was the collection of the crusading tax of a tenth of clerical incomes for six years authorized by the Second General Council of Lyons of 1274, and collected from 1276 to 1289 by a collector sent from Italy, the papal bureaucrat known in Scotland as Bagimond.17 Exceptionally full records in the Vatican archives illustrate in detail how he went about his business of assessing the taxable value of even quite modest benefices in many parts of Scotland, and then sending the cash he had collected to Rome. Local collectors were appointed for each diocese, and careful accounts were drawn up for sending to Rome for audit. Much has been done by Scottish scholars in recent years to make use of this source for both economic as well as church history, and its implications are gradually being revealed. A similar levy was organized in 1291,18 but the Wars of Independence that followed brought a break in the series; and the later fourteenth-century popes were to concentrate more on taking fees from individuals for provisions to benefices and other personal privileges rather than on blanket taxation.
The obverse of these efforts at extending papal authority over Scotland can be seen at two levels. First, along with clergy from most branches of the western church, representative Scottish bishops and lesser clergy are found attending general councils called by the pope at least from the Third Lateran Council of 1179 onwards, through the epoch-making Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, the two Councils of Lyons of 1245 and 1274, the Council of Vienne of 1311-12, and the later reforming councils at Constance 1414-17 and especially at Basel 1431-49. With the exception of the last of these (which over sixty Scots attended over a long span of years19), only a handful of Scots clergy were present on each occasion; but this was enough to keep the Scottish church informed and involved in church developments as a whole. Second, a concomitant after the 1215 council was an awareness of a need to have within Scotland a mechanism for passing the decisions of such general councils down to the local dioceses grouped on a suitable basis to match the relevant political authority whose backing the clergy required to put reforms into effect. The problems posed by the fact that Scotland, though a separate political unit, lacked a metropolitan archbishop with country-wide authority to call a provincial council that might enforce the many decisions of the general council were increasingly recognized. The outcome was an approach by the Scottish bishops as a group to Pope Honorius III in 1225 that led to the issue of a papal mandate authorizing the group (and by implication their successors) to hold annually a provincial council for the whole country under the rotating chairmanship of one of their number, which would act as a law-spreading and law-enforcing mechanism.20 Thus was introduced into Scotland a body devised for its special needs that was unique in western Christendom. Its function was many-sided. It was a consultative body through which the king could test the views of the senior clergy of the kingdom; it was a legislative body under the general canon law of the western church, devising local statutes to deal with country-wide and interdiocesan problems; it was a judicial body which could hear and resolve both cases of first instance and appeals, more conveniently available to disputing parties than the distant papal court. It served the kingdom on a regular basis, fulfilling an obvious need for more than 250 years. But the raising of the see of St Andrews to an archbishopric in 1472 (and of the see of Glasgow to similar status in 1492) was the product of disruptive relationships among the prelates involved, so that the council for several decades could no longer serve as a mechanism for keeping the whole Scottish church together. As the sixteenth century advanced, the need for reformation of some fundamental kind was to become apparent to an increasing number of contemporaries.
The original establishment of this council had been one sign of the growing recognition of papal authority in Scotland. Sometimes this was a consequence of initiatives from Rome, as was the case from the late twelfth century onwards when the pope acted as metropolitan in Scotland when confirming episcopal elections.21 For much of the following century at any rate new bishops had to go in person to the papal court in Italy to secure confirmation;22 and though later this could be secured by correspondence through agents, leading to papal authorization for consecration within Scotland, payment of the fees called ‘services’ came by the fourteenth century to be required before this was allowed. By the fifteenth century this practice was being extended to the appointment procedure for the abbots of the principal monasteries as well.23 As the scale and scope of papal appointments to lesser secular benefices (especially dignities in cathedral churches24) were gradually extended during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with the beneficiaries paying substantial fees in the form of ‘annates’,25 we may assume that ambitious clergy in Scotland pursued such ‘papal provisions’ repeatedly because it was worth their while to secure benefices with the advantage of a title that was more secure under the canon law than the traditional kind of title derived from presentation by a local patron, whether clerical or lay. This arose from the fact that the papal court also offered justice in cases of dispute under the international canon law. The popes were comparatively accessible at Avignon or elsewhere away from Italy during much of the fourteenth century (1308-69, 1370-1418); but even in the fifteenth century, when they were back over the Alps in Rome again, it was repeatedly thought worthwhile to appeal from local church courts in Scotland to a papal court, even if this involved the expense of keeping appeals going on one excuse or another. It was not so much a case of the aggressive expansion of a foreign papal authority into Scottish affairs as the response of willing popes to requests from below for support to appellants in doing their rivals down. This had its disadvantages at the time, for the crime of ‘barratry’ (the corrupt purchase of benefices) came to be regarded by King James I as a serious problem requiring legislation after his return from captivity in England in 1424.26 And when some of the clergy were allowed to accumulate a multiplicity of benefices, it could mean that in some parishes the people never saw the incumbent but only some less-qualified curate; and in some cathedrals most canonries were customarily held by absentees. There seems to have been pretty general acceptance of such weaknesses in the system, while the leading clergy tried their best to work it to their personal advantage.27
From the middle of the fifteenth century a new feature of papal policy can be observed, when secular clergy came (again for a fee) to be given papal mandates entrusting them with monastic headships. This practice, known as ‘commendation’, was almost unknown in England but common in France.28 An Inverness-shire vicar, for example, was made commendatory prior of Beauly in 1434. More strikingly, Bishop James Kennedy of St Andrews became at the same time commendatory abbot of Scone in 1439. The practice became common, sometimes perhaps to allow a senior churchman to reform a moribund monastic community, but probably more often simply to increase the financial standing of the commendator, who by this means could escape the rules against holding more than one benefice. In 1497 the practice had so developed as to even allow a brother of King James IV to hold the archbishopric of St Andrews in commend as a young man of about nineteen until he should be old enough at thirty to hold a bishopric under the canon law: at the same time he was granted the abbacy of Holyrood in commend as well.29 An outlook that found it acceptable for the king to make use of the church’s resources in this way would appear to have been more material and secular than spiritual and religious.
World History
