Failure of the Celtic Church in the bishopric

of Dunblane.

church of Brechin to the monks of Arbroath, and a dean appears among the witnesses. In a charter granted by the bishop of Brechin, the archdeacon, the chaplain of Brechin, and two other chaplains and the dean take precedence of the prior of the Keledei. After the year 1218 we find the Keledei distinguished from the chapter; and in 1248 they have entirely disappeared, and we hear only of the dean and chapter of Brechin.65

The other bishopric, however, which had been formed by King David from the old Pictish bishopric of Abernethy, and to which that church was more immediately attached— the bishopric of Dunblane-was undoubtedly connected with an old Columban foundation. The church of Dunblane dates back to the seventh century, and seems to have been an offshoot of the church of Kingarth in Bute, for its founder was St. Blane. He was of the race of the Irish Picts, and nephew of that Bishop Cathan who founded Kingarth; and was himself bishop of that church, and his mother was a daughter of King Aidan of Dalriada. The church of Dunblane was situated in the vale of the river Allan, not far from its junction with the Forth, and is mentioned in the Pictish Chronicle under the reign of Kenneth mac Alpin, when it was burnt by the neighbouring Britons of Strathclyde. We hear no more of this church till the foundation of the bishopric by King David. The catalogue of religious houses places Keledei as the religious community of the church, but the only Keledei we have any record of appear as located at Muthill, situated farther north, and not far from the river Earn; while a later record shows

65 The charters referred to will be found conveniently brought together in Reeves's British Culdees, Evidences, O.

66 He appears in the Felire of Angus as Blann cain Chindgarad— 'Blann the mild of Kingarth;' and

the gloss has .i. Espuc Cind-garadh .i. Dumblaan a prim cathair agus o Chindgaradh do .i. hi n Gallgaedelaib-that is, 'Bishop of Kingarth— i.e. Dumblaan is his principal city, and he is also of Kingarth among the Gallgael.'

us that the Columban monastery, like many others, had fallen into lay hands, and the clerical element then was limited to a single cleric, who performed the service. In a document containing the judgment of the pope's delegates in a question between the bishop of Dunblane and the earl of Menteith, in the year 1238, we read that the bishop had gone in person to Rome and represented to the pope that the church of Dunblane had formerly been vacant for a hundred years and more, and almost all its possessions had been seized by secular persons; and, although in process of time several bishops had been appointed to her, yet by their weakness and indifference the possessions thus appropriated had not only not been recovered, but even what remained to them had been almost entirely alienated; in consequence of which no one could be induced to take upon himself the burden of the episcopate, and the church had thus remained without a chief pastor for nearly ten years; that the present bishop, when appointed, had found the church so desolate that he had not a cathedral church wherein to place his head; that there was no collegiate establishment; and that in this unroofed church the divine offices were celebrated by a certain rural chaplain, while the bishop's revenues were so slender that they scarce afforded fitting maintenance for half the year.'67 This picture of clerical desolation does not differ from what we have found in other churches the possessions of which had fallen into the hands of lay families, and it is quite inconsistent with the statement that there was a body of Keledei in the church of Dunblane. The Keledei referred to must have been those at Muthill, which at this time was one of the principal seats of the earls of Stratherne. We unfortunately know little of the early history of this church. It adjoins the old parish of Strageath, which has been united to it from beyond the memory of man; and, as we have seen, 67 Lib. Ins. Missarum, app. to preface, p. xxix.

after the expulsion of the Columban monks in the beginning of the eighth century, St. Fergus or Fergusanius, a bishop of the Roman party who came from Ireland, is said to have founded three churches in the confines of Strageath. The church of Strageath was dedicated to St. Patrick, and the other two churches were probably those of Blackford, also dedicated to St. Patrick, and of Muthill, within the bounds of which parish were St. Patrick's well and a chapel dedicated to him; but whether we are to place the introduction of the Keledei at this period or in the reign of Constantine, the son of Kenneth mac Alpin, when the Keledei were reestablished under the canonical rule in Scotland, and when St. Cadroë was reviving religion in Stratherne under the auspices of his uncle St. Bean of Foulis and Kinkell, neighbouring parishes, there is nothing now to show. We find the Keledei with their prior at Muthill from 1178 to 1214,6s when they disappear from the records, and Muthill becomes the seat of the dean of Dunblane, who had already taken precedence of the prior of the Keledei. It is probable that under the growing importance of Dunblane as a cathedral establishment, the possessions of the Keledei had fallen into secular hands. In the meantime the earls of Stratherne had introduced the canons-regular from Scone into the diocese by the foundation of the priory of Inchaffray, separated from the parishes of Muthill and Strageath only by the river Earn. This took place some time before the year 1198. The founders were Earl Gilbert and his countess, and it was dedicated to St. Mary and St. John the apostle, to whom they give Incheaffren, which is called in Latin Insula Missarum,' placing it under the care of Malise, the parson and hermit, for canons under the rule of St. Augustine, and bestowing upon it the ancient Columban foundations of St. Cattan of Aberruthven and St. Ethernan of Madderdy, and the more modern churches of St. Patrick of Strageath, St. 68 See Reeves's British Culdees, Evidences, S, p. 141.

Makessog of Auchterarder and St. Bean of Kinkell.69 Bower, whose authority in matters of church history at this period must not be underrated, tells us that, when Earl Gilbert founded this monastery, he divided his earldom into three equal portions, one of which he gave to the church and bishop of Dunblane, another to the canons of Inchaffray, and the third he reserved for himself and his heirs ;70 but this is inconsistent with the account which the bishop of Dunblane gives of the state of the church five years after the death of that earl, and probably its only foundation was the arrangement proposed by the adjudicators, by which a fourth of the tithes of all the parish churches in the diocese was to be assigned to the bishop, in order that he might, after receiving a sufficient part for his own maintenance, appropriate the rest to the establishment of a dean and chapter; otherwise the episcopal see was to be transferred to the monastery of Inchaffray, whose canons were to form the chapter, and the bishop was to receive the fourth part of the tithes of those churches which had been appropriated by secular persons. This alternative plan did not take effect; and what Bower reports of the lands of the earldom may have been true in so far as regards the tithes of the secularised churches.

the Celtic

bishopric

The bishopric of Dunkeld prior to the thirteenth century Failure of was not confined to the district of Atholl alone, with the Church isolated churches which belonged to it within the limits of in the other dioceses, but extended as far as the Western Sea, and of Dunincluded the districts stretching along its shores, from the keld. Firth of Clyde to Lochbroom, and forming the great province and Peffery.

69 Lib. Ins. Missarum, p. 3. This Malisius, persona et eremita,' was probably the Malisius, 'persona de Dunblane,' who witnesses a charter of the bishop about 1190.-Reeves's British Culdees, p. 142. Inchaffray comes from Inisaifrenn, 'the island of masses.' This word aifrenn, ‘an offering or mass,' has in the river names been corrupted into Peffer

70 Qui divisit comitatum suum in tres equales portiones, unam ecclesiæ et episcopo Dumblanensi, aliam Sancto Johanni Evangelista et canonicis de Insula Missarum, tertiam vero sibi et suis usibus et heredibus suis reservavit.-Scotichron., B. viii. c. 73.

of Arregaidhel, or Argyll. It possessed this extensive jurisdiction as representing the primatial supremacy of Iona over the Columban churches, though the monastery of Iona itself, being within the bounds of the Norwegian kingdom of the Isles, came to belong to the metropolitan diocese of Trontheim. It is within the bounds of this diocese that, if popular notions regarding the Culdees are correct, we ought to find the most abundant traces of them; but, except in the church of Iona itself, they have left no record of their presence, and we do not find their name connected with any of the old Columban foundations. The great abbacy of Dull, founded in the seventh century by St. Adamnan, had, with its extensive territory, long been in lay hands. The church of Dull had been granted to the priory of St. Andrews by Malcolm, earl of Atholl, in the reign of King William the Lion, ' after the decease of his own cleric,' and the grant was confirmed by his son Henry and by the bishop and chapter of Dunkeld; and, in a memorandum of the proceedings of a court held at Dull by the prior in 1264, we find mention of a vicar of Dull and of a cleric of Dull. The names of William of Chester and John of Carham, canons, indicate a foreign infusion, and the name of a solitary clerauch witnesses for the Celtic element, but there is no appearance of any Keledei." Another great Columban abbacy-that founded by St. Fillan in the same century in the vale of Glendochartappears also to have passed into the hands of a lay abbot. In one of the laws of King William, ' called Claremathane,' we find the abbot of Glendochart ranking as a great lord with the earls of Atholl and Menteith, and sharing with the former the jurisdiction over the dwellers of the adjacent part of Argyll.72 And, in 1296, among the barons holding of the

71 Regist. Prior. S. And., pp. 245, 246, 294, 295, 296, 349.

72 Item si calumpniatus vocaverit warentum aliquem in Ergadia quæ pertinet ad Scociam tunc veniat ad

comitem Atholiæ vel ad abbatem de Glendochard et ipsi mittent cum eo homines suos qui testentur supra dictam assisam. Si autem warentus vocatus fuerit de Kintire vel de Com.