PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE volume now published contains the second of the three books into which the history of Scotland during the Celtic period has been divided, and, like the first volume, forms a substantive work in itself. It deals entirely with the history of the old Celtic Church, and its influence on the culture of the people. The early ecclesiastical history of Scotland is a subject beset with even greater difficulties than those which affect its early civil history. It shares with the latter that perversion of its history which has been caused by the artificial system elaborated by our oldest historians. The fictitious antiquity given by it to the settlements of the Scots is accompanied by a supposed introduction of Christianity at an earlier period, equally devoid of historic foundation; and this supposed early Christian Church has given rise to what may be called the Culdean controversy, by which the true history has been further obscured. It is a disadvantage which affects the history of all churches, that it is almost inevitably viewed through the medium of the ecclesiastical prepossessions of the historian. This has been peculiarly the case with the history of the

early church in Scotland, which has become the battle-field on which Catholic and Protestant, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, have contended for their respective tenets; and this evil is greatly aggravated when the basis of the controversy consists of such a strange mixture of fact and fable as that which characterises the history of the early Scottish Church, as it is usually represented.

People are tired, however, of this incessant repetition by church historians of the same one-sided arguments, and partial statement of authorities adduced to assimilate the early Celtic Church, in its doctrine and constitution, to one or other of the great ecclesiastical parties of the modern church. They want to know what sort of a church this early Celtic Church really was, irrespective of all ecclesiastical bias, and this the Author has attempted to show in the following volume. He has endeavoured simply to tell the tale of the early Celtic Church, as he finds it recorded in the oldest and most authentic sources of information. With this view he has treated of the history of the church mainly in its external aspect, and has been unable to touch, to any great extent, upon its doctrinal history, or to attempt to exhibit its theological characteristics. The discussion of these questions must still be left to the polemical historians. From the works of these writers the Author has thus derived little assistance; but his task has been greatly aided by another class of writers, who have brought to bear upon the different branches of the subject that

sound judgment, extensive research, and critical acumen, which are requisite to extricate the true history of the early church from the fictitious and controversial matter with which it has been encumbered.

The first to bring these qualities to bear upon the subject was undoubtedly the late Dr. Joseph Robertson, in a very remarkable essay which appeared in the Quarterly Review in 1849, under the title of Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals' (vol. lxxxv. p. 103); and this was followed by a valuable essay 'On the Scholastic Offices in the Scottish Church in the twelfth and thirteenth Centuries,' printed in 1852 in the Miscellany of the Spalding Club (vol. v. p. 56). But, in 1857, there appeared by far the most important work bearing upon the history of the early Scottish Church. This was the edition of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba, by the Rev. Dr. Reeves, now Dean of Armagh, printed for the Irish Archæological Society and the Bannatyne Club. This work is a perfect model of an exhaustive treatment of its subject, and exercised at once an influence upon the study of Scottish church history, the importance of which cannot be over-estimated. It was followed, in 1864, by a work of the same author on The Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History, in which he has brought together almost all the evidence we possess with regard to their history. In the same year the late Bishop of Brechin commenced his useful labours in this department of history by publishing the

Missal of Arbuthnot, with a valuable preface. And in 1866 the late Dr. Joseph Robertson produced his last and most important work, viz., the Statuta Ecclesiæ Scoticana, which he edited for the Bannatyne Club, in two volumes, the first of which consists of an elaborate introduction by himself. It is cause of much regret that this accurate and acute historian had not lived to devote his great abilities and extensive research to a complete history of the church, which would have rendered the present attempt unnecessary.

Dr. John Stuart, who had already, in his great work on the Sculptured Stones of Scotland, made one of the most important contributions to the elucidation of Scottish antiquities which we possess, edited in 1868 the Charters of the Priory of the Isle of May for the Society of Antiquaries, with a valuable preface; and in 1869 we are indebted to him for an admirable edition of the Book of Deer, printed for the Spalding Club, to which he has pre fixed an elaborate preface. Chapters IV. and V. of this preface on Celtic polity and on the early Scottish Church are essays of singular ability, and full of acute and valuable suggestive matter.

In 1872 the late Bishop of Brechin published his 'Kalendars of Scottish Saints, with personal notices of those of Alba, Laudonia, and Strathclyde: an attempt to fix the districts of their several missions and the churches where they were chiefly had in remembrance.' It is a very useful compilation, and may be referred to for the churches dedicated to the

various founders of the early churches mentioned in this work. It is only necessary to add that in 1874 Dr. Reeves's valuable edition of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba was, with his consent, published in the series of Scottish Historians, with a translation of the Life by the late Bishop of Brechin; and that in the same year there appeared in the same series an edition by him of the Lives of St. Ninian and St. Kentigern, with translations, introduction, and

notes.

Such is a short view of what has already been done for the history of the early Celtic Church of Scotland by historians of this class. The author of the present work is fully conscious of the imperfect manner in which he has executed the task he set before himself; but, without claiming to possess the same qualities in an equal degree, he has at least endeavoured to perform it in the same spirit, and takes this opportunity of acknowledging the extent to which he has freely availed himself of their labours. He has especially to acknowledge the valuable aid given him by W. Maunsell Hennessey, Esq., of the Public Record Office, Dublin, in enabling him to enrich his work with a translation of the Old Irish Life of St. Columba, by that eminent Irish scholar, which will be found in the appendix; and he has also to thank John Taylor Brown, Esq., and Felix Skene, Esq., for a careful revision of the proof-sheets of this work.

EDINBURGH, 27 INVERLEITH Row,

14th April 1877.