from the see of Hexham in 732, and the report was spread in that age that he had gone to found a bishop's see among the Picts. It is doubtful where that see was, but it is a historical fact that a bishopric was founded in St. Andrews by a Pictish king between the years 736 and 761, and that the relics of St. Andrew were commonly reported to have been brought to it at that time.1

This is the probable origin of the name and city of St. Andrews before it came to be the ecclesiastical metropolis of Scotland. The tradition is of ancient date, and from very early times the veneration of the Scots for St. Andrew has been national. Amid all changes, civil and ecclesiastical, they have clung to the tradition as tenaciously as if it had been an article of the Apostles' Creed. On several occasions it found something like national expression. In a parliament held at Arbroath Abbey in 1320, to defend the regal position of Robert the Bruce, the Scottish barons framed a manifesto to the pope (Boniface VIII.), in the preamble of which they asserted that our Lord had brought the Scottish nation, "who were settled in the uttermost borders of the earth, almost first to the most holy faith, and wished to confirm them in the faith by no other than the first apostle Andrew, whom they wished to be always over them as their patron"; and they further remind his holiness that his predecessors in the papal see "did with many great and singular favours and privileges, fence and secure this kingdom and people, as being the peculiar charge and care of the brother of St. Peter."?

In 1318, when the

stately cathedral of St. Andrews, so long in building, was consecrated in the presence of king Robert and many of the bishops and barons, the king offered, among other

1 Skene's C. S., ii. 261-275.

2 Chron. Picts and Scots, 292; Burton, Hist. Scot., ii. 284.

IX

TOWER OF ST. REGULUS IN ST. ANDREWS

179

gifts, a hundred marks yearly in gratitude “for the mighty victory vouchsafed to the Scots at Bannockburn by St. Andrew, the guardian of their realm."1

The Romanesque church and tower of St. Regulus, still standing in St. Andrews, that unique city of ruins, helped to keep alive the popular tradition. In a noncritical age they were attributed to the mythical Regulus of the fourth century. More recent authorities abridged their antiquity to the period of Hungus, who founded the see. "The common herd of Scottish antiquaries," says Dr. Joseph Robertson with some severity," "assign them to the seventh or eighth century." Upon better grounds both of structural design and historic evidence he identifies them with the small basilica erected by bishop Robert of St. Andrews between 1127 and 1144. In this opinion he has been confirmed by Sir Gilbert Scott and Dr. Joseph Anderson.3

1 Jos. Robertson's Scot. Abbeys and Cath., p. 47.

2 Scot. Abbeys and Cath., p. 34.

3 See Anderson's Scotland in Early Christian Times, 1st series P. 33.

CHAPTER X

Iona ravaged by the Danes—Parishes and Dioceses-Union of Scotic and Pictish kingdoms-Supremacy of Dunkeld-Round Towers of Abernethy and Brechin-Adrian-Monan-" The Scottish Church" first named-Iona-Supremacy of the Scots -Book of Deer-Scarcity of old MSS.

THERE is little of historic interest in the annals of Iona during the eighth century. The Easter cycle bred dissensions and rival abbots for some time; and when the dissensions ceased, the power and prestige of Iona were on the wane. The northern monastery of Applecross, its only rival in the west, lost its abbot Maelrubha, after a long rule, in the year 722. His successor Failbe was drowned in 737, with twenty-two of the brethren, "in the deep sea." They were probably on a voyage to Ireland when the accident occurred. Intercourse was frequent between Ireland and the Western Isles. It was much easier for them to reach Ireland than to reach Glasgow; yet the sea had its dangers to the voyagers in the frail crafts of those days, as we are reminded by another accident recorded in the annals of Tighernac for the year 749-"the drowning of the family of Iona." Entries less painful appear from time to time recalling the fame of the island for sanctity, as when we read of Niall Frosach, king of Ireland, resigning his kingdom and becoming a monk in Iona until his death in 780, and of Artgail, king of Connaught,

CHAP. X

DEVASTATIONS OF IONA BY DANES

181

who followed his example and died there in 791. Iona received living kings for discipline as well as dead kings for burial.

At the close of the century, 795, we meet with the first of the ominous entries,-" the devastation of Iona," which tells of the presence of the piratical Danes. Two years before, the Saxon chronicler records how "the ravaging of heathen men lamentably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne." The ruthless robbers had followed up their invasion of the east coast by a sweep round the Western Isles, plundering churches and monasteries on their way. In the same summer that they attacked Iona, we are told of "the burning of Rathlin by the Gentiles,' and its shrines violated and spoiled." In 806 Iona had a second visit, with still more disastrous effects, when sixty-eight of the brethren were murdered. Again in 825 the attack was renewed and made memorable by the martyrdom of Blaithmac, who, according to Dr. Reeves, seems to have been the superior of the monastery.2 The Danes made their

1

attack upon the church in the early morning, while Blaithmac was celebrating the Eucharist (probably therefore on a Sunday, as there is no evidence of a daily celebration in Iona), and demanded to be shown the place of St. Columba's relics. Blaithmac had previously counselled the brethren who were not prepared for death to save themselves by flight. He refused to discover the relics, and was thereupon slain by the Danes, along with some of the brethren who stood by him. One result of these piratical attacks upon Iona was the removal of St. Columba's relics to Ireland, from which

1 Life of Adam., lxxxii, and clxxiv. 2 Reeves, Adam., p. 337, gives Diarmit as abbot from 815 to 831,

so that Blaithmac may have been prior or deputy but could not have been abbot.

they were again brought back to Iona, and from Iona to Dunkeld. Other accounts relate that they finally fell into the hands of the Norsemen in Ireland, and there were not a few who believed that they still rested in Iona.1

The see of Lindisfarne was filled in 828 by Eccred, who, among his other benefactions to the see, presented it with the town and church of Jedburgh. Grub2 regards this as "the first indication we have of anything resembling the establishment of a parish within the limits of modern Scotland." He adds that "parochial divisions were probably by this time common in the Northumbrian kingdom." Metropolitan and diocesan divisions had been established by archbishop Theodore in the province of Canterbury; parochial divisions were of slower growth, though they formed part of his comprehensive scheme of church organisation. The want of territorial dioceses in Ireland and North Britain, and of limits to the districts and number of bishops, led to the English Church protecting herself by canonical legislation. In the synod of Calcuith held in 816, and presided over by Wilfrid, archbishop of Canterbury, a canon was passed forbidding any of the nation of the Scots from celebrating or ministering in the Anglican Church. What may seem still more singular, a similar canon was passed at Chalons in France, three years before, against the orders conferred by the bishops of the Scots. The same reason governed the exceptional legislation in both countries. The bishops among the Scots, both in Ireland and Britain, were many; they were often raised to the episcopate as a mark of ecclesiastical distinction, in

1 The account of Blaithmac's martyrdom was written in Latin verse a few years afterwards by Walafridus Strabus, the superior of the monastery of Reichenau on the

Lake of Constance, originally founded by Columbanus. Strabus died about 849. For references see Reeves as above, and Grub, i. 126.

2 i. 124.