to the structure of his church, which is dedicated to the blessed apostle Andrew. For he made it his business, and does so still (for Acca was still bishop of Hexham when Bede wrote), to procure relics of the blessed apostles and martyrs of Christ from all parts, to erect altars in honour of them, dividing the same by porches in the walls of the church. Besides which, he very diligently gathered the histories of their sufferings together with other ecclesiastical writings, and erected there a most numerous and noble library.' Bede adds that 'Acca was bred up from his youth and instructed among the clergy of the most holy and beloved of God, Boza, bishop of York. Afterwards coming to Bishop Wilfrid in the hope of improving himself, he spent the rest of his life under him till that bishop's death, and, going with him to Rome, learnt there many profitable things concerning the government of the holy church, which he could not have learnt in his own country.' 69 Among the relics of the blessed apostles thus collected and brought to Hexham by Acca were most certainly the relics of St. Andrew,70 and among the histories gathered together by him would no doubt be the legend of that apostle. When Bede finishes his history in the year 731, he tells us that at that time four bishops presided in the province of the Northumbrians. Wilfrid (second of the name) in the church of York, Ediluald in that of Lindisfarne, Acca in that of Hagustald, or Hexham, and Pecthelm in that which is called Candida Casa, or the White House, 'which, from the increased number of believers, has lately become an additional see, and has him for its first prelate.' 71 69 Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. c. 20. 70 In the Liber de Sanctis Ecclesiæ Hagustaldensis et eorum miraculis there is this statement—‘Ipsa insuper ecclesia pretiosis decorata ornamentis et Sancti Andreæ aliorumque sanctorum ditata reliquiis tam advenientium quam inhabitantium devotionem adauxit.'-Mabillon, A.SS., sec. iii. part i. p. 204. 71 Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. cap. 23. of Balthere From the time when the great diocese of York was broken Monastery up in the year 681, its history has had no bearing upon that of at Tyningthe churches of Cumbria or Lothian. The diocese of Lindis- hame. farne, however, extended to the Firth of Forth; and about this time the monastery of Tyninghame, at the mouth of the river Tyne in East Lothian, must have been founded within it by Balthere the anchorite. Simeon of Durham, in his History of the Kings, records in the year 756 the death of Balthere the anchorite, and, in his History of the Church of Durham, he adds in Tiningaham.' 72 He is popularly known in the district as St. Baldred of the Bass. By Bower St. Baldred is connected with Kentigern, and said to have been his suffragan bishop; and he reports a tradition that, a contest having arisen between the parishioners of the three churches of Haldhame, Tyninghame and Lyntoun, in Lothian, for the possession of his body, and arms having been resorted to, they were at night overcome with sleep, and on awaking found three bodies exactly alike, one of which was buried in each church. This sufficiently connects St. Baldred with Tyninghame; and Alcuin, who wrote in the eighth century, as clearly connects Balthere with the Bass.73 He was thus removed from Kentigern's time by more than a century, was in reality an anchorite, and connected, not with the British diocese of Cumbria, but with the Anglic see of Lindisfarne. This diocese contained the territory extending from the Tyne to the Tweed, including the district of Teviotdale; and we learn from the anonymous history of Cudberct that its possessions beyond 72 Eodem anno (DCCLVI.) Balthere anachorita viam sanctorum patrum est secutus, migrando ad Eum Qui se reformavit ad imaginem Filii Sui.— Sim. Dun. Hist. Regum, ad an. 756. 73 Scotichron., B. iii. c. 29. Alcuin, in his poem De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiæ Eboracensis, has the following lines, obviously referring to the Bass, under the head of 'Nota. Est locus undoso circumdatus undique Rupibus horrendis prærupto et margine In quo belli potens terreno in corpore miles Anglic bishopric the Tweed consisted of the districts on the north bank from the sea to the river Leader, and the whole land which belonged to the monastery of St. Balthere, which is called Tyningham, from the Lammermoors to the mouth of the river Esk.74 Beyond this western boundary the church of Lindisfarne possessed the monastery of Mailros with its territory; Tighrethingham, which cannot be identified with any certainty; Eoriercorn or Abercorn, on the south shore of the Firth of Forth, and the monastery in which Trumuini had his seat when he ruled over the province of the Picts during their subjection to the Angles, and from which he fled after the disastrous battle of Dunichen; and Edwinesburch, or Edinburgh, where the church dedicated to St. Cuthbert still bears his name.75 The history of the church of Hagustald, or Hexham, will be found to have an important bearing upon that of one of the more northern churches. Between the diocese of Lindisfarne and the Western Sea of Whit- lay that of Glasgow, or Strathclyde, now freed from the yoke of the Angles and under an independent bishop; but the disabout A.D. trict of Galloway was still under the rule of the Angles of hern founded end about 730, and comes to an Northumbria, and here the church of Ninian appears to have been revived under an Anglic bishop some few years before Bede terminates his history. 803. 74 Et illa terra ultra Tweoda ab illo loco ubi oritur fluvius Edreab'aquilone, usque ad illum locum ubi cadit in Tweoda, et tota terra quæ jacet inter istum fluvium Edre et alterum fluvium, qui vocatur Leder, versus occidentem ; et tota terra quæ jacet ab orientali parte istius aquæ, quæ vocatur Leder, usque ad illum locum ubi cadit in fluvium Tweoda versus austrum; et tota terra quæ pertinet ad monasterium Sancti Balthere, quod vocatur Tinningaham a Lombormore usque ad Escemathe.-Sim. Dun. Opera (Surtees ed.), p. 140. By the increased number of 75 Omnes quoque ecclesia ab aqua quæ vocatur Tweoda usque Tinam australem et ultra desertum ad occidentem pertinebant illo tempore ad præfatam ecclesiam ; et hæ mansiones, Carnham et Culterham et duæ Geddewrd ad australem plagam Tevietæ, quas Ecgfridus episcopus condidit; et Mailros, et Tigbrethingham, et Eoriercorn ad occidentalem partem, Edwinesburch et Petterham, et Aldham, et Tinningaham, et Coldingaham, et Tollmathe, et Northam.-Sim. Dun. His. Rec., p. 68. believers Bede no doubt means those of the Anglic nation who had settled there. The line of the Anglic bishops was kept up here for upwards of sixty years, during which five bishops filled the see; and, when King Eadberct added the plain of Kyle and other regions to his kingdom, they would become more firmly seated. It was probably at this time that the veneration of Cudberct and Osuald was extended into Ayrshire, where there are numerous dedications; but soon afterwards the power of the Angles began to wane, and the Anglic diocese of Candida Casa, or Whithern, owing, according to William of Malmesbury, to the ravages of the Scots or Picts, came to an end in the person of Beadulf, its last bishop, who lived to about 803.76 In other words, the disorganisation of the Northumbrian kingdom at this time and the decrease of its power enabled the native population to eject the strangers and assert their independence. 76 Eum (Pehtelmum) subsecuti sunt Frithewald, Pectwine, Ethelbriht, Beadulf, nec præterea plures alicubi reperio, quod cito defecerit episcopatus, quia extrema, ut dixi, Anglorum ora est et Scottorum vel VOL. II. ance of name of Culdee till after ex Columban monks. CHAPTER VI. THE SECULAR CLERGY AND THE CULDEES. No appear- 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 pulsion of 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, 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 1 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. |