but uncertain date, affords some useful information on the condition of these ecclesiastics. This house of early origin, placed on the fertile banks of the river Don, in Aberdeenshire, comes to light in record towards the end of the twelfth century, when it received grants from Duncan Earl of Mar, and Roger Earl of Buchan.1 In the year 1211 a complaint was made to the Pope by William, Bishop of St. Andrews, setting forth that “ quidam qui se canonicos gerunt, et quidam alii Aberdonensis dyocesis infra villam de Munimusc pertinentem ad ipsum," were endeavouring to establish a regular canonry, contrary to his will, and in great prejudice of his church. A commission was accordingly issued to investigate and settle the question, and the decision was to the effect that the Culdees in future should have one refectory and one dormitory in common, and one oratory without a cemetery, and that the bodies of the Culdees, or of clerks or laymen living with them, should receive ecclesiastical burial in the cemetery of the parish of Monymusk; that there should be twelve Culdees, with a thirteenth, to be presented by them to the Bishop of St. Andrews to be their master or prior. On the death of Brice, the existing prior, the Culdees should of common consent select from their own number three, to be presented to the Bishop of St Andrews, for his selection of one as prior. It was declared unlawful for the Culdees to profess the order or life of monks or canons-regular, without the bishop's consent, or to exceed the number of their body before prescribed; that when a Culdee died or withdrew, those who remained should fill up the vacancy. They resigned into the bishop's hands the lands which they had received from Gilchrist, Earl of Mar, without his episcopal consent, so that hereafter they should pretend no right to

1 Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, pp. 362, 370.

them which might prejudice the dignity of the bishop, the liberty of the church of St. Andrews, or the parish church of Monymusk. When the bishop should happen to visit Monymusk, he was to be received with due solemnity, and with a procession; and, on the other hand, the bishop promised to cherish and protect the said Culdees as his own.1

Between this date and the year 1245, the house of Monymusk received grants from the crown, the Earl of Mar, and the Bishops of Aberdeen and St. Andrews, the first of which is in favour of "St. Mary of Monymusk and the Culdees, or canons there serving God;" while, in the others, they simply appear as "canons." In 1245 a papal confirmation was granted in favour of "the prior and convent of Monymusk of the order of St. Augustine;" showing that the change from the ancient character of the house had now been formally completed.

There were Culdees at Brechin. David I. granted a charter of certain rights to the bishops and Keledei of Brechin; and down to the early part of the thirteenth century they were members of the Episcopal Chapter. Soon after this they disappear as Culdees, and were absorbed in the reconstructed corporation.*

According to an authority of the latter part of the thirteenth century, Culdees formed the cathedral body at Dunblane, at Rosmarkie, at Dornoch, at Lismore, and at Dunkeld. Mylne, in his History of the Bishops of Dunkeld, speaks of a change in the constitution of the monastery of Dunkeld having been made by

1

3

Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, p. 370.

2 Idem, pp. 363, 367, 368, 372.

Regist. Episcopat. Brechinen. p. 3.

4 Regist. Vet. de Aberbrothoc, pp. 175,

179. Regist. Episcopat. Brechinen. p. 262.

5

Catalogue of Monasteries annexed to Henry of Silgrave's Chronicle, MS. Cott., printed in Scalacronica, p. 241; and Reeves' Culdees, p. 32.

David I. when it was erected into a cathedral church, the Culdees having been superseded about the year 1127, and a bishop and canons coming in their place. The first bishop on this foundation was for a time abbot of the monastery, and subsequently a counsellor of the king. On this statement Dr. Reeves remarks, "In the concluding passage the writer seems to imply that the Kelledei who occupied the monastery which was attached to the mother church, were removed from this position, and constituted a college of secular clergy; while their former place was assigned to a society of regular canons, with the bishop, now made diocesan instead of abbot, at their head. These two corporations co-existed for nearly two centuries; and as at St. Andrews, so at Dunkeld, Silgrave's Catalogue notices the collateral societies of canonici nigri and· Keldei."

"1

2

There were Culdees at Abernethy, who appear in records down to the early part of the thirteenth century. In 1272 their establishment was converted into a society of canons-regular.

3

We hear also of Culdees at Iona,* at Muthil," and at Monifeith," -all places of early ecclesiastical settlement.

From the records now referred to, it seems plain that the term Culdee was a popular designation of the members of various monastic bodies of early foundation in Scotland. When they appear

with greater definiteness in records of the twelfth century, their character and position are the same with those of the monastic "families" in England, Ireland, and the Continent. They were monks living without rule, but with no obstacle in their position to their being received as members of the new foundations of regular canons, if they would agree to live canonically.1

At Monymusk, it would seem that the old body made an attempt at self-reformation, and wished to be regarded as canons without being subject to the ecclesiastical rule thus involved. The attempt indicates the strength of the current which had set in for the new institutions, and the slightness of the external difference which kept the bodies asunder."

p. 607).

Towards the end of the twelfth century Giraldus Cambrensis applies the same term to the monks of Bardsey island.(Itinerar. Kambriæ, p. 124. Lond. 1868.) In Ireland the term cele-de was used by the Annalists to designate ecclesiastics at Armagh, at Clonmacnois, at Devenish, and at other monastic seats. The earliest notice is dated A.D. 811.-(Reeves' Culdees of the British Islands, pp. 6, 25.)

1 It has been supposed by some that the Culdees were not monks but canonssecular. In our records, however, it appears that the communities of Culdees at St. Andrews and Lochleven were governed by abbots. (Chron, of Picts and Scots, p. 174. Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, p. 118.) It is plain also that they differed in their mode of life from the secular canons under the rule of St. Chrodegang, "non communiter viventes" (Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, p. 145); in the hereditary

character of their corporation; in their mode of administering the property and revenues of the church; and in their manner of performing the offices of divine service.—(Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, p.

370.)

There is no reason for thinking that the Culdees differed in their doctrinal views from those which prevailed in the church around them. The library of the Culdees of St. Serf's Inch in Lochleven was given to the canons-regular of St. Andrews on the foundation of their house. The character of the books of which it was composed, says Dr. Reeves, "is just what might be expected in a small monastic establishment of that date, and the ritual works are those which were in general use." (Reeves' Culdees, p. 131, note.) These consisted of a pastorale, a gradual, a missal, the works of Origen, the Sentences of St. Bernard, a treatise on the

The influences which gradually reversed this order in things ecclesiastical, were not the result of natural progress in the Celtic polity, but of foreign ideas and principles introduced from without, which ended also in the destruction of the civil institutions on which that polity rested.

Some of these are shadowed forth in a remarkable passage from a Chronicle of Durham, quoted by Selden, which has sometimes been regarded as meaningless and untrue, where, after recording the election of Turgot to be Bishop of St. Andrews in the year 1008, the chronicler proceeds: "In diebus illis, jus Keledeorum per totum regnum Scotia transivit in Episcopatum Sancti Andrea." This is obviously an inexact statement, but it points to the completion of a great ecclesiastical revolution-viz. the change from abbatial to episcopal jurisdiction.

2

In the beginning of the tenth century we find for the first time. in our annals mention of a bishop whose seat was at St. Andrews. This was soon after the translation of the primacy from the abbey of St. Columba, at Dunkeld, to that of St. Rule, at Kilrimont. There can be little doubt that the bishop was an inmate of the

Sacraments, a portion of the Bible, a Lectionary, the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospels, the works of Prosper, the Books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Canticles, a Gloss on the Canticles, a book called "Interpretationes Dictionum," a collection of sentences, a commentary on Genesis, and selections of ecclesiastical rules.-(Registr. Priorat. S. Andree, p. 43.) These works were suitable for any religious community in Western Europe, and were accordingly

transferred to the canons-regular for their use-a tolerably sure token that the differences between the bodies were less doctrinal ones, than on points of rule and discipline.

1 Chronicon Dunelmense, in Selden's Introduction to Twysden's Hist. Angl. Scriptores X., p. vi.

2 This has no connection with the episcopal order, which was always regarded as superior to that of the abbot.